From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Sat 07 Feb 2004 - 04:45:50 GMT
At 02:34 PM 05/02/04 -0800, Ted wrote:
snip
>Nonetheless someone had to consciously made the connection. When Lucas came
>up with "memetics" as a term for describing this field of study, it was a
>simple idea. As she herself became accustomed to the term, it became a
>habitual idea. As it became habitual for many other people, it gained the
>status of "meme."
At the time (and as I remember, it *has* been over 20 years now) there was
discussion about what to call the field. "Memetics" seems obvious enough
now, but it was not then. I do remember the discussion leading to the much
less popular term "memeoid." The use of that word could have gone like
viroid, which are infectious DNA or RNA elements so small they don't code
for anything, or in analogy to android or robotic. This meaning might have
been used for infectious word use such as "you know." I chose the android
(under control of) meaning because it seemed more useful. It never picked
up much use even though Dawkins put it in the 2nd Ed of _Selfish Gene_.
But the time course of the use of "memetics" can be researched through
Google Groups.
There are one post which uses "memetics" prior to 1989 (4 actually, but 3
refer to an Amiga frame grabber that was using memetics as a name.)
posts in the year, (cumulative)
1988 1 (1)
1989 9 (10)
1990 15 (25)
1991 21 (56)
1992 75 (131)
1993 489 (564)
1994 504 (1168)
1995 477 (1545)
1996 3730 (5275)
1997 3400 (8675)
1998 3430 (12105)
1999 3750 (15855)
2000 3020 (18875)
2001 1780 (20655)
2002 1440 (22095)
2003 950 (23045)
I don't know if the fall off in the last few years is because there is
little controversy or if much of the discussion has moved off Usenet to
mailing lists like this one and to webbed locations. "Memetics" on Usenet
is probably into the flattened top of the S curve
There is lots more that could be added to a graphical presentation of this
data, the points where various articles and books were published, _Selish
Gene_ in 1978 being the first, Hofstadter Metamagical Themas column in
Scientific American (from memory Jan 1983) which had a lot from Aaron
Lynch in it, and his book, L5 News articles 1985, 1986, Analog/WER article
1987, Vajk's article 1989, last day of June (exact mid year) 1993 when
alt.memetics was first listed. (Which I didn't discover until Feb.
1996) More recent books, Brodie, Dennett, Blackmore, and anyone else I missed.
Dr. Vajk's excellent early article is here:
http://www.google.ca/groups?selm=anrwliasCLpuuJ.LKy%40netcom.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain
There are many other ways the data could be presented. Each use could be
examined to see if the user was supportive or hostile, or the nuances of
the concept could be traced.
Fully enough raw material for a self referential PhD thesis.
Keith Henson
PS. Google lists me as author of 3 percent of the postings. :-)
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