FYI for those not on the memetics list (why not?)
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
Free newsletter! http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk] On Behalf
Of Richard Brodie
Sent: Monday, April 19, 1999 12:27 PM
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: RE: achieving audio and visual fidelity
MemeLab wrote:
(re phemotype)
<<Has anyone else thought about this things?>>
Actually your post spurred a very interesting new thought in me. Right now, memes are reproducing largely without benefit of an analogue to embryology. Fads sweep the country; MLM groups compete, religions persist and evangelize, and so on. It's a sea of memetic germ diffusing in different ways.
But the DNA replicator (sorry Mario, I just don't get your objection to the orthodox use of the word "replicator" to denote the intentional stance) found it useful to develop embryos. Organisms that marshaled their influence to become more and more powerful beings, then mated, regrouped, and spawned, had a catastrophic advantage over simple diffusing seed.
Will this happen in memetics? Has it happened? Is the "reinventing" meme the start of it?
Landmark Education, an evangelistic personal-growth group on which I have written before, reinvents itself every few years by rewriting its charter and vision statements. It's not really a new "organism" yet, though, because of the inertia of having most of the same members carry over to the next "generation." But what if some central committee, using some criteria of success, spawned several evangelistic groups with different charters and every few years recombined pieces of the successful ones, spawning wholly new groups?
THAT would be a phemotype.
Thank you "Jake," whoever you are.
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
Free newsletter! http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm