RE: Words and memes: Memes and religion/cults

From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@cogeco.ca)
Date: Sat Feb 09 2002 - 22:56:47 GMT

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    Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2002 17:56:47 -0500
    To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@cogeco.ca>
    Subject: RE: Words and memes: Memes and religion/cults
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    At 01:32 PM 09/02/02 -0500, : "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
      wrote:

    snip

    > > The concept of replicating cultural element has been around at least 35
    > > years and the word meme used for over 25. " memetics OR meme" limited to
    > > English in Google returns 144,000 hits. This area of knowledge may not
    > > excite a lot of opposition. At least the history so far suggest that.
    >
    >Wow! Keith, I am amazed by the 144,000 hits. Can they all be referring to
    >what I have been thinking of our rather small group of memeticians? I'll
    >have to look at some of them.

    As is the nature of Google, when it weeds out the redundant hits the number
    is *much* smaller. 731 web pages to be exact (many of them pointing right
    back to here). It looks like about 90 percent of those are on target for
    what we mean by "meme." Just for fun I put in memetics OR meme AND "Keith
    Henson" and ran down to the end of the listing. That produced 177 real
    pages. "Memes, MetaMemes and Politics" show shows up a dozen times.

    Long as I was taking the pulse of the topic, I went into Google's
    groups. "Memetics or meme" -networked (to weed out a program of that name)
    gets 112,000. (875 of them are mine.) From looking at the context of the
    words in a dozen scattered pages 90% seem to be about the
    topic. "Memetics" gives 20,400. The group alt.memetics shows 11,400 postings.

    Google sees alt.memetics, alt.recovery.religion, alt.fan.landmark as related.

    The earliest meme shows up is Oct and Nov of 1983. The Oct. posting uses
    the term meta-meme. Though I am not sure of the context, it seems to be a
    report of some computer worm and the meme of reporting them.

    Re: pesticide evolution - (nf)
    ..... the true scope of time and space. Always willing to help my memes in
    the battle
    for survival, Alan Silverstein (meme: see "The Mind's I", article by Dawkins)
    net.religion - 06 Nov 1983 by ajs@hpfcla.UUCP - View Thread (2 articles)

    HUMAN-NETS Digest V6 #62
    ..... the minds of the receivers (mememes; the transmitted form is
    youyouyous). The meme
    warning messages (which were certainly desirable) should be followed up
    with ...
    fa.human-nets - 04 Oct 1983 by Human-Nets-Request@rutgers - View Thread (1
    article)

    There is certainly lot of research material out there if anyone cares.

    Keith Henson

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