Re: virus: Rationality
Martz (martz@martz.demon.co.uk)
Sat, 1 Mar 1997 11:26:35 +0000
On Thu, 27 Feb 1997, Alex Williams <thantos@decatl.alf.dec.com> wrote:
>> But that's how transmission works. If I were to have a phone conversation
>> with you, I could say something, in English which you would then interpret,
>> becuase you can speak English. Does this mean that I havn't transmitted
>> anything to you?
>
>No, actually, you haven't transmitted anything but some
>pressure-patterns in the air via other means. Memes /themselves/ are
>never transmitted. They travel via no medium, except in further
>abstraction, one I'm loath to step to because it loses some necessary
>detail for me. In the camping example, what you've transmitted are
>some marks, some traces in the world which I then come along and
>/interpret/, however fuzzily. That fuzziness is /key/ in
>understanding why I say memes cannot be transmitted, they can only
>make a mark on the world for another to interpret.
Would you prefer looking at it as reproduction rather than transmisson?
So the meme has reproduced, but its offspring may have mutated.
--
Martz
martz@martz.demon.co.uk
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