From: "Tim Rhodes" <proftim@speakeasy.org>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Copying, imitation, transformation, replication
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 02:09:48 -0700
Mario Vaneechoutte writes:
>Here is another problem about imitation, inspired by Paul Marsden's
>considerations on the Werther effect.
>
>When people all of a sudden start committing suicide after reading a
>book or noticing suicide on the news, is this imitation? When it were,
>one would expect a never ending wave of suicide. What we observe is
>that it readily fades out.
What we observe is a classic pattern of a failed diffusion.
(And little wonder! While suicide may score well on "observability" and
"complexity", it seldom does well on "compatibility" or "relative
advantage." And it outright fails in the "trialability" catagory on any day
of the week.)
-Tim Rhodes
===============================================================
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