Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA03807 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 18 Jan 2002 18:55:50 GMT Message-Id: <200201181851.g0IIpQB18894@terri.harvard.edu> Subject: Re: Knowledge, Memes and Sensory Perception Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:51:29 -0500 x-sender: wsmith1@camail.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T. Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: "Memetics Discussion List" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi Philip Jonkers -
>With potential memes I mean
>memes laying dormant in the brain, abstractly
>speaking, waiting to be called upon and expressed
>or utilized if needed. Until that moment there is
>no way of telling whether the host contains them.
Kinda why I wanted to know 'what'. Potential energy is recognizably
harnessable and, yeah, measurable, from physical conditions.
Potential memes, (hey, let's be strict, internal memes...) are not. Until
they become apparent in behavior, there is no way to know if they are
there.
However, culture itself is a set of physical conditions that set up
potentials.
When at a formal dinner, if you have the potential meme for using a
fingerbowl, you will. If you don't, you will, perhaps, have the potential
meme of asking about things you are ignorant of, and find out through
questioning, preferably someone who just used one.... (But, don't ask
that guy who just put out his cigarette in it....)
Most memetic experiments, and indeed, most 'memetic engineerings', are
just that- setting up situations where expected responses,
(internal/potential memes), will be realized. And, making little or
drastic changes in the parameters of the variables to get differing
responses, but, not, in any real sense, creating new memes.
(I remember, back in the good old days of experimental music, how every
performance was called a 'realization'.... Ah, art.)
If there could be such a thing as potential memes, then I would concede
to such a thing as potential art.
But, I don't.
Memes are out there.
Culture is the matrix of memetic behavior.
- Wade
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