virus: Fractals and memes
EVINZANT@cc.weber.edu
Mon, 10 Jun 1996 09:18:34 -0700 (MST)
In a letter I previously wrote, I was comparing memes to fractals. I put forth
the "postulate" that perhaps the two had some similarities. The foundation I
laid for this was based in the famous Mendelbrot sets therom. I stated that it
seemed to me that memes seem to evolve a lot like it does. One of the
comparisons I made is that as one of the values grows larger and iterates, it
eventually spirals off to infinity. In my context I was using infinity as a
synonym to "maximum developement".: Since there is more just an idea of what
infinity is and not a concrete value (because as we you can always add one), I
felt that this interchange would be allowed. At this point the meme that
followed the same path as the fractal would in the end reach the same state of
maximum developement. At maximum devlopement the meme would start to lag as
technology/society continued to develope. At this point new memes would
develope to replace them (however they could still be based on the previous
meme) to keep up with developement. I guess wether or not this is true, in
kind would depend on the "animal" thread we've been discussing. If we compare
the evolution of the human being to a meme (I could guess evolution is a meme)
would each step in developement be considered a meme, or part of the meme?
Have I cleared this up at all? Am I still making sense? Let me know what you
think....