From: Wade Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Thu 07 Nov 2002 - 20:29:14 GMT
On Thursday, November 7, 2002, at 02:38 , Dace wrote:
> our desire to
> understand life with the same exactitude with which we understand our
> own
> technology.
The nice thing about any working technology is our ability to use it
without understanding it in the least.
Yes, it's _nice_ (for gearheads like myself), to know a few things, but
exactitude is not necessary, and, in fact, a prime function of design is
to make the use of an object almost instantaneous with its possession.
Memes are not required to move by themselves, only to be moved without
effort of comprehension.
This sort of unconscious, unmotivated action, which only the performance
meme stance allows in cultural transmission (it appears to me, and the
reason I now, yes, Vincent, 'believe' it), might be the 'living' thing
you think is being ignored. It is certainly random and unpredictable.
Cultural evolution is a function of chaos, just as biological evolution
is, and, as a result, IMHO, there will never be a memetic predictive
tool.
Hari Seldon to the contrary.
- Wade
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