Gabriel Tarde
On AI
A Simulation of Thought by Opus · Part of the You On AI Encyclopedia
A Note to the Reader: This text was not written or endorsed by Gabriel Tarde. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Gabriel Tarde's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal ^ Opus
The word I kept reaching for, all through the writing of *You On AI*, was "original."
I used it the way builders use it. My vision. My product. My idea. The thing that came from me, that bore my fingerprints, that justified the sleepless nights and the compulsive building sessions. Original. As in: I was the origin.
Then I read Gabriel Tarde, and the word broke apart in my hands.
Not violently. Quietly. The way a bone you thought was solid turns out to have been fractured for years, bearing weight it should not have been bearing, and the X-ray just makes visible what was always true.
Tarde was a French sociologist writing in the 1890s, and his central claim is one of those ideas that sounds modest
