Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA16087 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 1 May 2001 11:30:13 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745E27@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: memes and SOP Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 11:26:31 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
I think that all of these could indeed be seen as artefactual memes, or
g-memes.
These are practices that reflect particular attitudes and beliefs, and have
persisted and spread. To really check, one would need to do an historical
search to examine the spread of these practices. I suspect the Dewey one
would be the most memetic of these practices, the others could, in
principle, quite easily have been spontaneously arrived at in different
libraries at different times (I suspect the public library systems around
the world did borrow such practices from others, so there's still some
memetic thing going on).
Certainly examining the origins of what constitutes SOP in different
institutional environments, and how SOPs spread, would be a memetics piece
of research (although it could also easily be a piece of diffusion research,
or organisational culture research).
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Dan Roland
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Monday, April 30, 2001 12:22 pm
> To: memes list
> Subject: memes and SOP
>
> Please excuse the newbie questions here.
>
> I have been working on a list of what I think are memes in public
> libraries:
>
> 1. charging fines for overdue materials.
> 2. requiring a library card in order to check out materials.
> 3. arranging materials according to the Dewey Decimal system.
> 4. security systems to guard against book theft.
>
> and I am curious to hear from the more learned on this list as to
> whether or not these do consitute memes and why.
>
> Another name for each of these in organizational parlance would be
> "standard operating procedure" and I would also be curious to any
> comment on the difference.
>
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
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>
===============================================================
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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