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Dear Klaus,

Thanks for your note. If anyone is confused about why they did not
see my note on igloos, it is because I did not post it. I used it as an
example in a couple of private notes.

I have been so deeply engaged in thinking and wrestling with issues
in the thread(s) on research methods that I just felt I couldn't get active
in this fascinating thread. I send a private note every now and then
when I see something that interests me.

You're right about memes. I'm not suggesting the igloo is the meme,
but rather that the information used to transmit knowledge of how to
build an igloo fits the model of information transmitted via memes.

As you note, memes have no significant dimension or physical presence,
at least no more than the digital instruction of software code. Memes are
carried by human beings who use brain storage and processing, so
they do use some form of storage and energy.

As i see it, memes short-hand for a process. This process is explained in
different ways in different fields. Such fields as organizational learning
and knowledge management offer useful explanations for how
memes work. KM and OL investigate reasonably short term time
spans -- days, weeks, years, occasionally. decades or centuries.
Other explanations derive from or may be applied to fields that examine
other kinds of process or time span. Communication, anthropology
or social psychology are examples of these.

This is a fascinating thread and I am delighted to read the contributions,
but I will return to lurking on this thread.

I'm off to London today for the CLTAD conference, so I won't even lurk
again until my return on the weekend.

Warm wishes,

Ken



>ken and keith,
>
>sure, harold innis is a basic staple of communication researchers.  in my
>reading, he shows how different media of communication create and structure
>time.
>
>re memes, i guess one should not confuse the objects or behaviors the memes
>bring forth and the memes that do that.  their relationship is like the
>relationship between organisms and genes, or between phenotypes and
>genotypes.  the igloo would be a consequences of the meme igloo that
>eskimos presumably carry in their mind.  i wouldn't know what the spacial
>dimension of the meme igloo would be.  it is a concept, an idea, a
>reproducible practice, an algorithm -- maybe dawkin's theoretical fiction
>that has some explanatory capability in the conversations among (cognitive)
>scientists and perhaps among designers too.
>
>keith says: all concept-objects have TIME/SPACE/IDENTITY features - it is
>just that the patterns of indication differ.
>
>i am not so sure (1) whether they HAVE features or whether WE choose to
>interpret them as such.  (2) in my conception, memes may have these
>features in their consequences, like artifacts do, but i have a problem
>with confusing the genetic information with the organism that reproduce it,
>an algorithm with its implementation within a computer, or going back to
>igloos, the idea of an igloo, which is being reproduced, and the igloo that
>is built and melts during the summer months.  you can measure the igloo,
>tale a picture of it, but not its meme.
>
>klaus
>