Re: virus: Rationality

Alex Williams (thantos@decatl.alf.dec.com)
Fri, 28 Feb 1997 23:28:33 -7700 (EST)


> idea") is easier than saying something like "I have an idea and want you
> to have a similar idea so I spew a bunch of noises/fingertwitches created
> according to what I understand as being our common system into the
> atmosphere in the hopes that you will recieve them and from them come up
> with something like my idea".

An excellent summary. Almost the intellectual equivalent of sending
knowbots out into the Net which only `understand' a limited subset of
protocols and filetypes but have the facility to interact with files
intermediary between agent-knowbots to devise more complex and useful
protocols, all the while doing their best to `hook on' to relevant
things.

An incomplete and incorrect in many ways analogy, but one with the
right spirit, I think.

> Point being, while the compression can distort, I don't think it
> distorts anything vital in the case above. My intent in using the word
> 'communicable', in fact, was to avoid problems with 'transmissible' and
> the like. I intended 'communication' to express that process of creation,
> transmission, and reception of the signal and then the construction of
> meaning from it.

I'm not too unkind to the term `communication' as opposed to
`transmission.' Communication carries a lot less baggage along with
it, and as such, teases me unmercifully with hints of what I'm saying
when I actually /say/ it.

(Quite possibly a case of my own memesphere emulating a
recipient-memesphere in order to better model extra-modal
communication.)

> Don't worry, Alex, I haven't abandoned you.

Yeah, you're the only one. ;)