From: Gene Doty (gdoty@fidnet.com)
Date: Mon 05 Jul 2004 - 23:01:07 GMT
These postings suggest the following to me:
It's common for people to say that "science fiction writers predict the
future." (For some people, this seems the only justification for sf.)
Arthur C. Clarke's imagining geosynchronous communication satilletes is
a commonly cited example, although there are others.
My point: rather than "predicting the future," a writer like Clarke is
creating a meme and sending it out. If it finds appropriate vectors for
replication it becomes a reality in the non-fictional world.
I think the difference is that the common attitude attributes a kind of
prophetic ability to the sf writer, whereas a memetic view sees the
writer as a vector for memes that may or may not develop beyond the
bounds of the fiction.
--- I was infected with the space travel and immigration off-earth memes at about 12 years old. They're still strong in me, although I've not acted on them as Keith has. Anybody have any ideas about how the information coming back from Saturn (the Cassini-Huygens probe) will affect the whole space-exploration memeplex? Gene -- Gene Doty 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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