From: "synmail" <syntagm@icon.co.za>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Meme-o-random
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 23:06:58 +0200
I need to write this down before my present experience of memetics
changes so much that I can no longer remember the initial conditions.
I need to relate it to people who can bounce the 'ball' back and add
some spin to it.
1. <meme> is is a meme (departure point)
2. I have been 'infected' by a meme abouts memes and memetics (fact)
3. I cannot say for sure, but I may well have seen the word <meme>
before. If I have, I think that it was screened out by some mechanism
that confered some contextual immunity at the time. I find this
intriguing because I am an information strategist, a practicing
semiotician, I studied structuralism and (still) read Saussure,
Barthes, Eco et al.
4. My infection is not directly due to someone's proximate behaviour,
a perception of change in the way people around me think, feel,
believe or behave; nor will (or has) anyone around me see or detect
any change in my behaviour (yet). However, how I think about and
execute brand building strategies will change for sure. I used
Webferret to look the word meme up because I saw it in a document, and
its use stimulated my curiosity.
5. As far as I can tell the virus is more Dawkins B than Dawkins A.
However, I understand and accept (much) of what Gatherer wrote
(JoM-EMIT Vol 2, 1998). I also read Marsden and Speel's subsequent
comments, and many other publications.
6. To some (it seems) <meme> is a blunt instrument with which they
are frantically trying to club to death anything and everything that
stands between them and some undisclosed destination.
7. Memetics to me is like a drop of ink flattened into a blot between
the left and right halves of my brain. My ink blot is unique, but not
totally unique. There are fractal similarities (Ryle's family
resemblance) between the the concepts of memetics that we all share,
and there are differences. To be sure, not all members of a species
are identical, but all elephants look like elephants and I know one
when I see one.
8. Implicit in many of the things that I have read (in a very short
space of time) is a Theory of Everything that is analogous to the
Theories of Everything in the physical realm.(Barrow 1991)
9. If this <meme> has done anything for me it has fused together
thoughts (ideas) that I have had (and developed) over a very long
time. Ideas about marketing, advertising, communications, information
theory, strategic understanding, ecology, paradigms and syntagms,
chaos, dissipative structures, entropy, and, and, and.
10 What then is the difference between CK 21H30 April 14th, 1999 (yes
I can pinpoint it) and CK 23H00 April 20th, 1999?
>> I understand both differently and better (please note that I do not
claim that I am right)
>> I believe I can explain (and predict) certain phenomena within the
realm of brands, consumer behaviour and the diffusion of innovations
>> to this end I may have I belief system allthough I do not know
whether I have/ enjoy a standardised operationalisation of the concept
belief system.
>> the population density of believers in this sub-system is down to
one.
11. I would like to believe that population memetics is possible, and
that I am a host, but I take Gatherers points on the nose (however, it
is not a knock-out)
12. Let us not (re)discover things that have been around for a long
time, and call them memetics.
memetically yours
Chris Klopper
Syntagm Research
===============================================================
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