From: Vincent Campbell (VCampbell@dmu.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 24 Oct 2002 - 11:41:44 GMT
<But "couch potato," in my opinion, is not a meme but an artifact.
It encodes
> an idea, along with a bunch of associated ideas, for transmission. People
> who hear that transmission will either pass it along, let it die, or store
>
> it away for future use some day.>
>
But isn't that what people do with memes? Seems to me to be a
pretty good description of artefact as meme to me.
<I am a man.
> I am A man.
> I am a MAN
> I AM a man.>
>
The changes here might change their interpretation by people reading
them, but they are not necessarily dramatically different enough to not call
them memes. (Could this be a linguistic equivalent to hair colour? Wild,
speculation from the social scientist there... on the basis that hair colour
in our species doesn't appear to play and substantive part in adaptive
potential so it varies from person to person). Slight variations in text
are fine as sufficient meaning can still be conveyed.
Vincent
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