From: M Lissack (lissacktravel@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed 25 Feb 2004 - 13:24:41 GMT
To Kenneth, Steven, and Scott
When all one has is a hammer, very many things "seem"
to be nails. And the strange thing is that a high
percentage of those "nails" will behave just like
"real nails" (be pushed further into a substrate) when
"treated" with the hammer. That much of the remainder
get "crushed" is merely an outgrowth of only having a
hammer.
Of course eventually someone comes along who points
out that the back edge of the hammer can be used to
pry things out and to carry ssome objects around.
Then others will propose that with care the back edge
can be used to "open things" and still others that
combinations of all these steps when carefully
executed can be used in certain environments to
"gather, harvest, sort, and reconstruct."
The original simple idea that "all things are nails"
which underlay the concept of "use the tool you've
got" has now been replaced but the "use the tool
you've got" overlay remains. The idea of "how" to use
that tool has been transformed from a simple code --
swing the hammer and hit -- to a more complex
locational process which involves examining the
environment and then determining which of several
potential uses.
To the "purists" none of this matters. I have a
hammer and I use it.
Memes as ideas which "carry" their own reproductive
force and which are subject to Darwinian "selection
pressures" are in some stage of the evolution of the
hammer above.
And the bulk of the posters to this list (and we have
NO IDEA what the lurkers think) are purists.
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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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