From: Jeremy Bradley (jeremyb@nor.com.au)
Date: Sat 26 Oct 2002 - 06:47:58 GMT
At 04:14 PM 21/10/02 +1000, you wrote:
Snip.....(Bruce)
>The concept of memetics has been of great assistance to me in the study
>and practice of change management. While I agree with the holistic
>approach (the definition of a meme event as an observable behaviour in >a
cultural context), by far the most significant factor in that process >is
language. For example: it is possible to bring about significant >change
in an organisation by changing the language used by the people >within that
organisation (acknowledgements to If Price).
Hi Bruce
I'm Jeremy, welcome back. I think that we are working through defining
memetics as an academic discipline; a working definition of a meme being a
part of that process. Confusions, however, will be prolonged by the
conflation of meme and memetic processes.
I think that memes are simply cultural elements; some propagate readily,
others don't. A meme propagates by transference; when, by whatever process
is available to it, one individual, in a common culture with one or more
others, adds another element of culture to their persona. A meme event
would therefore be a cultural happening.
>
>The operational environment that makes the mememetic process possible >is
the pattern identification system used by our brains, and as far as >I can
tell, that system evolved from the basic need to quickly identify >danger
in order to stay alive. What makes the exact defining of what a >meme is,
and how it works difficult, is that it does not work the same >way each
time. If the brain receives part of a pattern it will fill in >the blanks
from past memories/experiences. As no 2 peoples experience >of life is
identical, it is obvious that the reaction to a specific >meme will be
different in each case. I think it would help if we >stopped treating a
meme as an object. To me the "meme" is the process >of transference of a
pattern and the resultant behaviour. As people >with an interest in
memetics, what we are doing is creating a language >to describe a concept.
I hope it doesn't take another 2 years for the >memetics community to agree
on some standard definitions.
>
>Regards,
Bruce Howlett
As I said above Bruce, IMHO, a meme is an object (or an item to be more
exact). However, I think that you are spot on when you write about the
differing reception of memes. In my Hons. hear I looked at narrative
patterns in traditional literature. It was fascinating to note that when a
graph was made of story-values, memes stor(y)d for intergenerational
transfer, it consistently conformed to a graph of the cultures' 'values'.
This will be the problem of AI; intelligence is subjective. Therefore, if
one wanted to design an AI software programme, AI software would have to
include a programmable memetic filter - probably through narrative
analysis. But that's another rave, IMHO, a meme is an item of culture -
nothing more and nothing less.
Cheers
Jeremy
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