Plagiarism...

After reading the Tenner article. I can't quite work out what I think about it. Obviously, there is no way to stop these advances in technology; although one might wonder, why would you want to?
The article makes a good point that anymore, our thoughts and ideas don't feel as original as they might have 20 or 30 years ago. This is not due to a lack of creativity by people, but it is due to better communication. People tend to think similarly, so our thoughts and ideas lead us to the same places. Therefore, how can it be plagiarism, if you didn't copy it, or take somebody else's ideas? What if you simply had the same idea as someone else- which is entirely possible.
Again, I'm not sure how I feel about the article and the information it gives me. In high school, I had a teacher that used the Turnitin site. It actually does find passages that are just similar, not exactly the same. I turned in a paper on Charlemagne. She searched the Turnitin site and it turned up a passage that was similar to one in my paper. Let me just say that I am not a cheater, nor have I ever been or will ever be a cheater. I would never take someone's ideas and call them my own. Therefore I was slightly confused when she kept me and 2 other students after class. The other two students had clearly plagiarised and they admitted it and agreed to do another paper for half credit. My paper, however she was unsure about just because it was such as small amount. She was going to give me a zero but instead, settled on a 50% because I so adamantly maintained that I had not plagiarised. I still feel however, that it was unfair. These types of search engines and sites will cut back on cheating however, I feel that it will sometimes also unfairly punish those who do not cheat.
As I said, there is no way to slow or halt the advancement of this type of technology but perhaps the definitions of plagiarism should be rethought.