Re: a bibliometric analysis of memetics

From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Wed 09 Jun 2004 - 00:53:20 GMT

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    At 01:30 PM 04/06/04 +0100, Bruce Edmonds <b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk> wrote:
    >is at:
    ><http://www.fp.ucalgary.ca/jarobins/Memetics_fullSpread_body.htm>
    >
    >
    >... if you look at the graph showing memtic references over time it is
    >evident that memetics has already peaked and is now in decline.

    Same thing can be seen here in Usenet news postings. From a post Feb 2004:

    http://cfpm.org/~majordom/memetics/2000/16552.html

    Postings (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)

    You will have to put this in a mono spaced font to see the graph. Postings per year.

    4000 /
                                     * * / 3500 * * /
                                                              / 3000 * /
                                                              / 2500 /
                                                              / 2000 /
                                                    * / 1500 * /
                                                              / 1000 /
                                                          * / 0500 * * * /
                                                              / 0000 * * * * * /
            88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03

    Cumulative posts

    25000 /
                                                       * * / 20000 * /
                                                 * / 15000 * /
                                           * / 10000 * /
                                                              / 05000 * /
                                  * / 0000 * * * * * * * /
            88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03

    The per year plots have remarkably similar shapes.

    As of tonight memetics OR memetic in Google gets 131,000 hits with this journal at the very top of the list. Oddly "memetics" alone gets 129,000 but the top spot is taken by this: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMES.html

    I think the reason for the fall off in new papers and posts is that the topic has become close to universally known--at least among people who spend time on the net. A memetics based story in a comic book would have been unimaginable ten years ago. Now the comic story is being made into a TV show episode!

    A nice little corner of academia eaten by popular culture. How appropriate. :-)

    Keith Henson

    PS Results 1 - 10 of about 83,800 for "warren ellis". (0.33 seconds) Results 1 - 10 of about 82,600 for "evolutionary psychology". (0.28 seconds) Results 1 - 10 of about 129,000 for memetics [definition]. (0.12 seconds) Results 1 - 10 of about 192,000 for cryonics [definition]. (0.13 seconds) Results 1 - 10 of about 634,000 for singularity [definition]. (0.45 seconds) Results 1 - 10 of about 1,590,000 for nanotechnology [definition]. (0.16 seconds)

    PPS (Note 1 from http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/cults.html ) "You can calibrate on the major topics, such as "nanotechnology" which gets
    (mid-2001) about 160,000 Web pages-up from 80,000 a year ago--on the Google search engine. Try "evolutionary psychology" and you get about 23,000 Web pages. By comparison, "memetics" gets about 50,000 Web hits."

    So the number of hits on nanotechnology has gone up in the last three years by a factor of ten, evolutionary psychology by 3.6 and memetics by about 2.5. [Warren Ellis is the author of the "Global Frequency" comic series where "memetic invasion" was a story.]

    =============================================================== 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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