From: "Paul Marsden" <PaulMarsden@email.msn.com>
To: "memetics" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Taking Memetics Forward
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 08:31:34 +0100
The final session on last week's international symposium on memetics in
Namur concentrated on very practical ways to take memetics forward.
Our goal or aim is the establishment of memetics as a respected, funded,
successful field of research.
That is where we want to be, and here are a list of some suggestions that
were made of how to get there (apologies for any omissions, I think I got
them all down - more suggestions welcome).
I believe Dave Hales will be posting the minutes of the meeting shortly.
1) Use JoM address as e-mail signature
2) Forge links with socio-cultural evolution Website
http://socio.ch/evo/index_evo.htm
3) Build a list of academic journals related to memetics
4) Build and publish an annotated bibliography of memetics
5) Review in the JoM peer reviewed publications on memes/evolutionary
thought in the social sciences (there are about 16 academic journal papers
on memes)(and invite these authors to submit to JOM)
6) Write a meme FAQ
7) Publish a paper on possible real world applications of memetics
8) Publish JOM on paper
9) Build a homuncular "straw man" used in standard social science for
memetics to attack, and provide examples of its use. (a la SSSM in
evolutionary psychology)
10)Outline possible empirical research projects
11)Prepare a list of key evolutionary thinkers/researchers in the social
sciences
12)Invite established social scientists working within an evolutionary
paradigm to submit articles to JOM reviewing their work
13)Publish reviews of related fields in JOM
14)Explicitly explain what memetics can do that conventional social science
cannot.
15)Provide a list of people working in the field of memetics
16)Pursue possible funding opportunities (academic, commercial and public)
17)Publish a general introduction book (Blackmore's pop science The Meme
Machine will be published by OUP early next year - There will be a lot of
talk about memetics around the launch - we should cash in on this)
18)Organise future symposia (Meme 2000?)
19)Cross fertilise - submit JOM articles to other academic journals (check
copyright)
20)Focus research on theoretically informed empirical applications of
memetics
21)Get JOM abstracted in social science indexes
Paul Marsden
Graduate Research Centre in the Social Sciences
University of Sussex
e-mail PaulMarsden@msn.com
tel/fax (44) (0) 117 974 1279
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission:
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/
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