Message-Id: <v03102800afea2a49f22b@[194.109.13.153]>
In-Reply-To: <33C41ED7.7495@pacbell.net>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 08:07:19 +0200
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Ton Maas <tonmaas@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Re: Genetics/Memetics analogy
Arel Lucas wrote:
>I do not think that every experience represents a meme. "Experience" is
>an abstract for a series of percepts which may or may not be classified
>or encoded by the perceiving brain. Only replicable experiences that are
>encoded in the ideosphere and can be spread to other brains in an encoded
>state can be memes.
Agreed. I don't know whether "replicable" is the defining criterium though.
After all our experiences are coded transformations of reality. So the only
relevant criterium seems to be whether or not we can make a difference that
makes a difference. We often take things like punctuation for granted, but
it is very important where we draw boundaries distinguishing one experience
from others. For instance, the introduction of copy-and-paste technology
(computers, sampling keyboards etc.) has changed many of us from music
lovers to collectors of useable phrases, "grooves", riffs or "sounds".
Instead of experiencing the archaic linear structure of a song (with its
build up to the chorus and maybe a bridge), we are shopping for isolate
fragments, which we then store for later use (often to find they turn out
to be a lot less moving or exciting when recycled out of context).
Ton Maas
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