Sue Blackmore lecture Wednesday 5.15pm London

From: derek gatherer (dgatherer2002@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Mon 10 Feb 2003 - 08:15:44 GMT

  • Next message: Vincent Campbell: "RE: Sue Blackmore (and other luminaries)"

    Don't forget, those of you who are within reach of central London, that Sue Blackmore is speaking at the Victoria Park Plaza Hotel (http://www.vp-sw1.com) at 5.15pm on Wednesday. For a free ticket and programme for the free parts of the rest of the event, go to: http://www.infotechpharma.com and click on Free Exhibition on the left hand bar. There is actually quite an interesting free session tomorrow (Tuesday) at 2.30pm on Systems Biology with David Fell from Oxford Brookes University, and on Thursday there is a NASA module demonstration at 10.30am.

    This is what the web site now says:

    Guest Keynote Presentation: Dr Susan Blackmore

    The Evolution of Meme Machines

    We humans are all meme machines. So are the photocopiers and telephones, computers and web servers that we have built to help us. But why are they changing so fast, and were they really designed for our benefit?

    According to the theory of memetics, they were all designed by memetic evolution for the sake of the memes themselves. Like genes, memes are replicators. That is, they are information that is copied with variation and selection, which makes an evolutionary process possible. As with other evolutionary processes, memetic or cultural evolution happens for the benefit of the replicators themselves, in this case the memes. The internet, the web and all its consequences are just what we should expect of the rapidly accelerating evolution of meme machines.

    Dr Susan Blackmore has done many interviews for television, and presented programmes, including a
    "Horizon" on alien abductions and 'The cleverest ape in the world' for Channel 4. She is now more interested in science, especially evolution, evolutionary psychology, memetics, meditation, and altered states of consciousness.

    http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk

    __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

    =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon 10 Feb 2003 - 08:13:32 GMT