Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19980902120435.00dd90c8@popmail.mcs.net>
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 12:04:35 -0500
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net>
Subject: Re: Taking Memetics Forward
In-Reply-To: <002301bdd647$3d32bf80$364f95c1@pc>
At 08:31 AM 9/2/98 +0100, Paul Marsden wrote:
>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).
Thank you, Paul.
Here's another suggestion:
Encourage honesty in the ways we promote our work--hyperbole and deception
lead to anti-memetics immune reactions and reluctance in grantmakers.
>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
--Aaron Lynch
http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/thoughtcontagion.html
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