Re: DNA Culture .... Trivia?

From: Lawrence de Bivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 12 2001 - 16:07:14 GMT

  • Next message: Lawrence de Bivort: "Re: DNA Culture .... Trivia?" 

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From: "Lawrence de Bivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
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Subject: Re: DNA Culture .... Trivia?
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 11:07:14 -0500
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    Thanks, Mark

    First, let me stress that we treat memes as linguistic units. Not that all
    linguistic elements are memetic, but all memes will have specific linguistic
    properties and coding, some structural and some informative/substantive.

    So our research has focused on the transmission, dissemination and retention
    of language that is coded memetically as it spreads (or fails to) through a
    population. We 'measure' two things: 1) the language as it spreads and is
    degraded, and 2) the behaviors/individual and collective actions that are
    undertaken by the recipients of the memes as a result of their receipt
    (before-after comparisons).

    I should mention another memetic issue we are trying to understand: ethics.
    We believe that memes can be designed and released deliberately, with
    potentially significant consequences. So our technical research is meshed
    with an ethical inquiry and guidance. We have not 'solved' this issue, and I
    am not sure it can be.

    - Lawrence

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Mark Mills <mmills@htcomp.net>
    To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 12:21 AM
    Subject: Re: DNA Culture .... Trivia?

    > Lawrence,
    >
    > At 02:00 PM 1/9/01 -0500, you wrote:
    > > From a sociological and communicational POV, one can carry out empirical
    > >research easily, without knowing much about the substrate. For example:
    > >fidelity of transmission, rates of dissemination, and resistence to
    > >alteration can all be determined without brain/substrate knowledge.
    >
    > I'm interested in how this works. For instance, transmission fidelity,
    how
    > does one measure fidelity without 'something' to measure? The same goes
    > for dissemination and resistance to alteration.
    >
    > Mark
    >
    >
    >
    > http://www.htcomp.net/markmills
    >
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > 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

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