Re: virus: Angelica de Meme

Dan Plante (danp@ampsc.com)
Fri, 11 Apr 1997 22:45:48 -0700

At 12:07 PM 4/7/97 +0100, Reed Konsler wrote:
>>From: Tim Rhodes <proftim@speakeasy.org>
>>Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 13:00:16 -0700 (PDT)
>
>>Have you looked lately at the percent of posts on this list that directly
>>explore the nature and/or qualities of memes? I'm not asking for 100%,
>>but can we at least raise the number into the double digits, please?
>
>Um, Tim, this is the Church of Virus, not alt.memetics. Meme theory
>informs, but doesn't circumscribe, our dialectic. This is a "free-market"
>of ideas...each person posts what they wish when it strikes their fancy.
>Given that memetics is such a powerful tool, I'm sure we will return to it...
>but sometimes the mind, or a discussion group, needs a sabatical.
>
>Remember, everything of significance happened by chance.
>

Here I go putting words in other peoples' mouths again....

I think Tim's statement was drawn from the perspective that, while this list
may not necessarily exist for the sole purpose of plumbing the depths of the
meme, it nevertheless has, as its raison d'etre, an acknowledgement of memetics
as a percieved phenomenon. Further, and based on this point, I believe he was
trying to draw attention to the fact that a large number of postings to this
list use the terms 'meme' or 'memetics' as the subject of argument, with little
or no consensus on what these terms specify.

Dan