From: Gene Doty (gdoty@fidnet.com)
Date: Fri 18 Jun 2004 - 14:49:18 GMT
Keith Henson wrote:
> At 01:40 PM 17/06/04 +1000, you wrote:
>
> But I wasn't clear about what I was trying to ask. Has anyone used
> "meme" on the consumers? As in "buy our memes!" or "Joe Blow has the
> better meme set, vote for him as dog catcher!" So far I can't think of
> an example.
>
> Keith Henson
>
>
Perhaps this isn't quite what you're asking, but it's probably
connected--in a recent novel (_The_Face_), Dean Koontz makes passing
reference to memes and memetics. Koontz is "selling" the consumer a
chill at the perfidy of intellectuals, however:
"Even Ms. Dowd, his English and reading tutor, didn't expect him to
_enjoy_ books; she doubted they were good for him. She said books were
relics; the future would be shaped by images, not by words. In fact, she
believed in "memes," which she pronounced _meems_ and defined as ideas
that arose sponaneously among "informed people" and spread mind-to-mind
among the populace, like a mental virus, creating "new ways of thinking."
I don't know if the inaccuracy of this definition reflects Koontz's
understanding. I suspect it does. "Ms. Dowd" is one of several
unpleasant (and malicious) "intellectuals" in this novel. Koonz
certainly replicates an "intellectuals are dangerous" meme.
Gene Doty
(newbie to this list)
-- http://www.umr.edu/~gdoty http://www.ghazalpage.net =============================================================== 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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