::scr clue

[Simon Batistoni]

On 19/03/02 14:07 -0000, Tom Forwood wrote:
> >
> > Dawkins' original concept of the meme, which he came up with in "The
> > Selfish Gene" in 1976, was a fairly unworked idea - he simply proposed
> > that we might have replicators which work for cultural frameworks in
> > the same way that genes do for physical beings.
> >
> 
> You are guilty (like pretty much everyone else who ever uses the term meme
> of perpetuating the myth that Dawkins invented the concept and name of a
> meme.  In fact as Dawkins points out in "The Selfish Gene" and many
> susequent books is that the idea had been around for a while before.
> Unfortunatly I cant quite remember who did think of it.

Oh, I can believe that the concept was around beforehand. It is, after
all, simply a description of the way that human beings communicate
anything at all.

Everything I can find online (I'm pretty book-free here) *does* credit
Dawkins with coining the word meme, however, or certainly of first
using the word in a publication.

Of course, the mythical aspects surrounding the coining of the concept
and terminology is itself a pretty fascinating example of how memes
can spread.

> > Being Dawkins, I think he was thinking on a grander scale than the
> > things which we tend to call memes today - he would prefer to consider
> > the Bible as a meme, rather than the kitten/wanking joke, because it
> > has had a far more profound, and inescapable effect on large swathes of
> > human society. Whether we like it or not, many of our sexual
> > attitudes, and even the structure of our entire week is dictated by
> > ripples which have spread from the bible, for example.
> 
> On the contrary, the memes described in the book are smaller still to
> closely parallel the size of genes.  

Okay, well I was ad-libbing because someone wanted a post on their
mailing list to respond to :) I must re-read The Selfish Gene...

> In the memetic theory memes combine to form ideas on a par with organisms
> (or organs) and then on to form cultures (ecosystems).

Okay, so I suppose to refactor to something relevant to the start of
this thread, the "photoshopping" meme and the "All Your Base Are
belong to us" original game introduction meme combined to create the
"All Your Base Are Belong to Us" organism.

Which, I guess, takes its place amongst the thriving ecosystems of
mailing lists, SomethingAwful forums and other sundry places.

Woof! Is the the right tree?

-- 
"In marketing the word 'free' means the cost is concealed.|   christopher
Nothing is ever free. There is always a price to pay, in  |          ross
terms of money, or effort, or time, or quality."          |tunnel visions