Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA18899 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 20 May 2000 15:13:42 +0100 From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: The Guru mutation Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 07:11:43 -0700 Message-ID: <NBBBIIDKHCMGAIPMFFPJKEJAENAA.richard@brodietech.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: <00052011274301.00329@faichney> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 Importance: Normal Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Robin wrote:
<<putting capitals
in the middle of compound words like MicroSoft, which started I think
in the Pascal programming language.>>
Microsoft doesn't have an embedded capital, although some other software
firms did back in the early-mid '80s. For a very short period after founding
in 1975 it was spelled with a hyphen, i.e., Micro-Soft, but that lasted only
a very short time and was changed well before the company was well known.
<< That's certainly where I first came
across it, in the mid-80's. In C, mainly used on Unix, words were run
together, but virtually no upper-case was used then -- there's more of it
now, especially in C++. There has been a C-like thing for all lower-case
outside computing, but the internal capitalization meme seems much stronger
and these are obviously alleles.>>
Internal capitalization was part of the "Hungarian" programming standard
invented by my mentor Charles Simonyi in the '70s at Xerox (where GUI was
also invented and stolen by Apple before Microsoft re-stole it). It mutated
when we developed Windows and divided the company into applications and
systems sides. Charles had no direct involvement in the systems side and
they kind of screwed up Hungarian, but it persists in the official Microsoft
programming examples provided with C++ and Windows SDK.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techart/hunganotat.htm
<<BTW, if memetics is to be internally consistent, then whether a change in
a meme is accidental or deliberate is irrelevant -- from the meme's point
of view, which is what memetics is about if it's about anything, it makes
no difference. It's a mutation either way.>>
exACTly.
Memetics is about predicting the future based on differential success of
cultural replicators. Sociobiology predicts that ultimately everything will
be reined in by genes. Even if true, which I don't believe, there's still a
lot of "failed experiments"---like our whole lifetimes---to study using
memetics.
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
http://www.memecentral.com/rbrodie.htm
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