Copying is not new — it is the engine
The cycle is old: new, copy, spread, worn out, new again. Copying was always the delivery system for originality. AI just runs that middle stretch faster.
It helps to calm down about all this, because the cycle is old.
It helps to calm down about all this, because the cycle is old. Only the speed is new.
The thinker Umberto Eco described how culture moves. A new form appears at the edge. Mass culture captures it, strips out its sharp intent, and repackages it as something easy to consume. The bold gesture becomes a style. The style becomes a convention. The convention becomes wallpaper. Then it feels worn out, and the space opens for something new.
The cycle is simple: new, copy, spread, worn out, new again.
And it has always run on copying. The long middle stretch, where an idea is diluted and applied to places its maker never imagined, is not a failure. It is how a new form reaches a wide audience. The Bauhaus grid entered corporate branding. Punk type entered magazines. Copying is the delivery system for originality.
No. It speeds the cycle and raises the demand for the next genuinely new.
It helps to calm down about all this, because the cycle is old.
The thinker Umberto Eco described how culture moves.
Mass culture captures it, strips out its sharp intent, and repackages it as something easy to consume.
AI just mechanises that middle stretch. That is all it does, structurally. So the cycle is not broken. It is faster.
A pattern that once took five years to travel from the edge to the mainstream now takes months. Two things speed up together. Styles wear out sooner. And the hunger for the next new thing arrives sooner too. The cycle spins faster, but it still runs on the same fuel: someone making a gesture no one has made before.
The thinker Umberto Eco described how culture moves.
No. It speeds the cycle and raises the demand for the next genuinely new gesture.
The cycle is old: new, copy, spread, worn out, new again. Copying was always the delivery system for originality. AI just runs that middle stretch faster.
This is the short version. Read the full-length essay, “Appropriation is Not New: The Eternal Return of the Vanguard”.
This issue is part of Everybody's Smart, a newsletter on taste, judgment, AI, culture, cognition, and the future of professional work. New issues every 2 to 3 weeks, free on LinkedIn.
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