Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA09516 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 12 Jan 2001 20:35:15 GMT Message-ID: <3A5F678D.2B73204F@clara.co.uk> Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 20:22:39 +0000 From: Douglas Brooker <dbrooker@clara.co.uk> Organization: University of London X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: DNA Culture .... Trivia? References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010109112458.02119ac0@pop3.htcomp.net> <5.0.2.1.0.20010109231616.02122720@pop3.htcomp.net> <004d01c07cb1$bb622180$d363b8d0@wwa> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Reading Lawrence's post a couple of questions arose - could anyone take a stab
at them?
One day in a previous career in motion picture distribution I was at a staff
meeting and noticed that the four male employees in the room all had their hair
combed the same way. The significance of the observation first is that the boss
had always combed his hair that way but that the others didn't. The change in
the hair style of the other three had probably occurred in the prior month or
so. I'm not aware that anyone in the room other than myself ever noticed this.
How would one describe, in linguistic terms, the structural properties of the
meme(s) in the behaviour described above?
A second question: could someone please provide an example of a linguistic
element that is not memetic, even amongst linguists, with a brief explanation of
why this is so?.
On the ethics point, is anyone associating meme dissemination with things like
character, personality, or 'gravitas'? Most of what I've encountered with memes
follows transmission, dissmeination, retention, resistance or immunity from a
fairly macro point of view. In what ways might small group memetic behaviour be
the same and be difference than more broadly 'social' phenomena?
Douglas
Lawrence de Bivort wrote:
> 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
>
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