From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: The Significance of Memetics is ...
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 13:14:31 -0800
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.981121153200.8350B-100000@snowhite.oswego.edu>
Rob Levy wrote:
<<Can anyone here state an important insight or even an accurate prediction
that has come from using the memetics paradigm? >>
1. Self-replicating businesses such as multi-level marketing will take on
increasingly greater importance. (Predicted in my 1995 book)
2. Truth will not automatically win out over well-packaged falsehoods.
3. It is unremarkable to see the simultaneous invention of "original" ideas
by multiple people in multiple locations (e.g. Newton and Leibnitz inventing
the Calculus simultaneously or Dawkins and myself coming up with the term
"Virus of the Mind" simultaneously -- not to imply a similar importance to
the two of course).
As an engineer, the most interesting thing about memetics is the potential
for engineering self-replicating viruses of the mind for good or for evil.
Thanks for asking the right question!
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/votm.htm
Free newsletter! Visit Meme Central at
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
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