Re: Technology vs. culture

From: Chuck Palson (cpalson@mediaone.net)
Date: Thu May 18 2000 - 09:39:56 BST

  • Next message: Chuck Palson: "Re: Central questions of memetics" 

    Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA08350 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 18 May 2000 14:37:09 +0100
Message-ID: <3923AC5C.4E46EDF@mediaone.net>
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 09:39:56 +0100
From: Chuck Palson <cpalson@mediaone.net>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (WinNT; I)
X-Accept-Language: en
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Technology vs. culture
References: <20000518113212.AAA26584@camailp.harvard.edu@[204.96.32.100]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk

    "Wade T.Smith" wrote:

    > Vincent Campbell made this comment not too long ago --
    >
    > >Also, does
    > >technology change in relation to culture (e.g. the design of houses
    > >according to Fung Shui)?

    Wade -
    I think you are using an unnecessarily narrow definition of belief that
    will only accomodate explicit secular or religious belief systems. That's
    not what cognitive experts limit it to. We have, for example, a set of
    beliefs about how the world works that we call intuitive physics. Cultures
    automatically conform to these beliefs for obvious reasons. That is, we
    don't build bridges with the belief that gravity doesn't exist. And we
    don't have cultural beliefs that defy these beliefs because they would not
    be workable. Sometimes we have blind spots becasue all systems are
    compromises. But the system as a whole has so far worked reasonably for
    perhaps a million years -- or we wouldn't still exist.

    > Putting a mirror on a door is not technology....
    >

    Not at MIT anyway. But it's still technology. Again, your definition is
    far

    ===============================================================
    This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
    Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
    For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
    see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 18 2000 - 14:37:57 BST