Re: virus: Re: How did we get here?
Dave Pape (davepape@dial.pipex.com)
Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:07:59 GMT
At 11:13 10/02/97 -1000, Peter wrote:
>At 09:13 AM 2/10/97 -0800, you wrote:
>>
>> Jake asked:
>> P.S. I stumbled on memetics after researching political theory. How did
>you all get intrested?
>>
>This is going to sound very weird, but it is the truth. I came up with the
>basic concepts underlying what you all call memetics (and what I will now
>learn to do) twenty years ago, when I was thirty. This, after spending ten
>years trying to develop a theory for machine consciousness. Last year I
>finally put it all down in a paper called, "Mind As Cosmos."
>
>Now here is the hard part for me to understand. I missed the whole movement.
>I don't know how. I've been researching obscure philosophers,
>neuroscientists and A-life folks. Close as I came was Dennett's
>"Consciousness Explained." I was intrigued that he nibbled at the
>self-replicating idea, but he seemed focused elsewhere. I guess I should
>have payed closer attention to the bibliography. Never came across the
>memetics universe until two weeks ago, when I punched it up in YAHOO! I feel
>real stupid. You cannot imagine what it is like, after all this time, to
>come across thousands of people devoted to the subject.
No need to give yourself a hard time... the field of memetics, as a meme
structure itself, is still quite young, and is therefore represented in the
total memetic processing resource (MPR) of homo sapiens in quite a thinly
spread, bitty way... there's no central fund for memetic research yet, for
instance... memetics doesn't yet get a shelf in the library...
Dave Pape
===============================================================================
Jar 148.
Phonecalls: 01494 461648 Phights: 10 Riverswood Gardens
High Wycombe
HP11 1HN