> Paul Prestopnik wrote,
>
> >One night I was sitting at home thinking of memes that would
> >lend themselves to study, and I came up with two canidates. The only one I
> >can remember now would be Fortune Cookies. [snip]
> Also maybe icecream cones, although that could
> >be harder.
>
> What is the difference, if any, between a meme and an invention or new
> technology (and I mean "technology" in its widest possible sense, as "any
> application of knowledge to achieve practical ends"), such as described by
> Everett Rogers in _Diffusion of Innovations_?
Well, I didn't read _Diffusions of Innovations_, so I can't answer
specifically, but a meme would better represent the idea of a technology, rather
than the physical technology itself. For example as a commercial around where I
live states, people in third world countries may have never heard of a Burger
King, but they know about Apollo, and they know a man walked on the moon. The
meme of the US space program may have spread around the world, but the people
around the world have not participated.
The reason I mentioned fortune cookies, is because they are not a specific
product of a company (at least not as far as the general public is concerned).
Originally at least there was probably very little advertising money spent on
spreading the idea of a fortune cookie. Memes of modern inventions and
technology spread primarily because of advertising and because of direct and
immediate benefit to the consumers. Fortune cookies offered neither, so must
have spread by a more gradual word of mouth method. It seems that some of the
memes we are interested in discussing are of this type, and so I offered this
forward.
-Paul Prestopnik