From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Mon 27 Jan 2003 - 20:45:52 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Vincent Campbell" <VCampbell@dmu.ac.uk>
> Thanks for this. Fits in really nicely with some of the teaching I
> currently do, looking at the social impacts of new media technologies.
>
> I'm always interested in corporate research agencies like this (alright
for
> 'interested' read 'highly skeptical') in terms of their motives and
methods.
>
> There's not a great deal to massively disagree with here, and the argument
> about new kinds of social networks through mobile phones has been put at
> length very recently by Howard Rheingold in his 'Smart Mobs'.
>
> What really interests (and here I genuinely mean interested) me is how
alot
> of the currently sexy talk about things like network theory, information
> societies, complexity theory and so on gives a really firm basis for
> memetics, particularly artefactual memetics.
Hi Vincent,
The next may be of interest to you,
There was in my country not so long ago a discussion about the use of
GSM 's and especially the use of SMS.
Teachers, linguistics and sociobiologist were getting concerned about the
use of the Dutch language.
Not so much that youngsters used the English language to get their message
across, but more about the rising of a specific language for SMS.
As you know, the number of tokens you can get on your screen are limited,
so the youth is using more and more abbreviations, like 4 y is the short for
' for you '.
Also where you usual should write, I am Kenneth, in short they write IMKen.
There are a lot more of those things around, but the main point to remerber
is
that 1_ it exists and so I think it is important for your interest in
artefactual me-
metics and 2_ it is important for memetics in the long run because, once
again
a kind of pathomeme is on the loose, this time concerned with the values of
one's native tongue.
And what is written below is also relative, I think....
Anyway,
best regards,
Kenneth
> ICTs are the meme machines, and the way new ones exploit, invade and
> transform social organisations and behaviour is what gives memes the
> platform to operate.
>
> For example, as mentioned in this piece the mobile phone disrupts neat
> demarcations of private and public space, just as the landline phone
invaded
> space, as well as dislocating interpersonal communication from many of the
> things natural selection provided for us to function optimally (e.g.
seeing
> and smelling the person you're talking to), whilst at the same time
> massively extending and enhancing the scope for information transmission
and
> communication.
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