From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Sat 19 Jun 2004 - 03:23:11 GMT
At 09:49 AM 18/06/04 -0500, Gene Doty wrote:
>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.
It's not a bad statement about memes (with a paranoid slant) for showing up
in a work of fiction and spoken by a villain
>Gene Doty
>(newbie to this list)
In that case, welcome! Would this be your web
page? http://web.umr.edu/~gdoty/
List traffic has been low for a few months. You are welcome to read back
into archived threads and restart discussion on them if you have questions
that were not answered ad nauseam in the thread.
Keith Henson
PS. If you are a fan of haiku, Hud Nordin, a guy I know in California
writes them.
http://groups.google.ca/groups?selm=7onvdt%24fcm%40dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com&output=gplain
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