From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Sun 02 Mar 2003 - 16:07:21 GMT
>
> On Sunday, March 2, 2003, at 01:26 AM, memetics-digest wrote:
>
> > The information is still encoded in the artifact. Just because no
> > one still has the cultural tools with which to decode it doesn't
> > mean the information has vanished.
>
> Okay, perhaps I said 'bullshit' too soon, but, really, just because no
> one still has the cultural tools is _precisely why_ there is no
> information still encoded within a forgotten artifact. Memes are
> cultural units of information, and this artifact has lost (yes, lost)
> the information that was required to make it. It is now an item for
> research and wonderment, not without, admittedly, cultural import, but
> the cultural context of its creation is gone.
>
> You seem to have adopted a homeopathic model for cultural information,
> and it is just as invalid and specious there as it is in medicine.
>
This is the same question as the question of whether or not
hieroglyphics embodied memes prior to the discovery of the Rosetta
stone. I would say that the potential was there, and it was rendered
actualizable by the translation key.
>
> - Wade
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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 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
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