Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 15:39:44 -0400
From: Karthik Swaminathan <karthik@echonyc.com>
To: Memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: [brodie book]
> Looking for more information on memetics, I went out and bought a copy of Richard Brodie's "Virus of the Mind." Reading through it I found myself dissapointed.
>
> I was looking for something a bit more scientific and less speculative. Something more researched along the lines of Levy's "Artificial Life" or Gleicks "Chaos Theory." This book was more along the lines of American talk show sensationalism. At times he seemed to be blurring genes and memes a little too much that I wasn't sure which he was talking about. His approach is overly subjective and opinionated, and what information he gives is too obviouse and is common heuristics. There is a definite "point of view" here which helps in getting a slot in "Oprah" but not for someone looking for a bigger picture breakdown of culture, beliefs and ideas.
>
> On the other hand, it did hook the right memes in me to make me spend my 20 bucks on it.
===============================================================
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