From: "Paul Marsden" <paulmarsden@email.msn.com>
To: "memetics (E-mail)" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Meme mapping - help evolve a meme map
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 16:41:25 +0100
The "applied memetics" online research tool that I have been developing over
the past year is now up on the web, and you are welcome to visit and help
evolve a 'meme map'. A meme map is essentially a mindscape - a semantic
network around a core concept. These meme maps are generated in an
iterative Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' selection process, where word
associations compete in parallel pandemonium for selection. All respondents
have to do is play an online association game where reinforced associations
become stronger, whilst those neglected whither and die. Please feel free
to visit www.ideaslab.net and help evolve a meme map around the concepts of
healthy living, ebusiness, or suicide (the last one needs a confidential
password - do email me if you want to evolve this one.) I'll submit the
results in a paper to the JOM. Feedback is most welcome - I know this is
not rocket science but it does perhaps show how an evolutionary science of
culture might inform current social research techniques. Using the network
theory of knowledge and a combinatory theory of creativity, the resulting
meme maps might be used to help structure information that fits the
architecture of our minds - memes that make connections.
Anyway, I would just to take this opportunity to say thanks to Johan Bollen,
Francis Heylighen and Liane Gabora; the formers' work on adaptive hypertext,
and Liane's notions of semantic continuity and creative association have
massively informed the development of this tool. And as always thanks to
memelab.
Paul Marsden
Graduate Research Centre in the Social Sciences
University of Sussex
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/hbpe2/darwinia.htm
Tel 07967 175626
Fax 07967 175636
p.marsden@sussex.ac.uk
paul.marsden@newscientist.net
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