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[edit] In the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
- The Power of Language
- Information carrier
- Vector of ideas
- The capacity to change
- The capacity to damage
- Joiner of minds, binder, sociocultural glue
- Myth, Legend and Rumour
- Many forms include (classifiable? expandable?):
- Joke
- Poem
- Song
- Tale
- Prayer/spell
- Cross-cultural mythology shows patterns in myth (Hero with a Thousand Faces)
- The propagation of myth
- Mutation
- Branching
- Fusing
- Stories as infectious ideas: what makes a story successful?
- Exploiting deep drives
- Evokes emotion/sensation
- Teaches
- Is tool in itself (e.g. work song, war chant, prayer/spell)
- Memorable
- Concise
- Eloquent
- Rhetoric and the Sophists: Classical Figures of Speech
- Accessible
- Formal constraints
- Rhythm
- Rhyme
- Verse/stanza/chapter structure
- Logical
- Living Texts and Lethal Texts
- Religious works
- Manifestos
- Existence beyond the author
- Parallels in viral code
- Biological
- Electronic
- Burroughs on language
- Nam-Shub Myth & Snow Crash
- Meta-meaning
- "Plus ca change"
- In relation to purpose
- Sarcasm, irony
- Detournement as a strategy
- Reappropriating purpose
- Reshaping meaning
- Flux
- In nature
- In oral tradition
- Weakened by manuscripts
- Killed by printing
- Reborn online in wiki
- Biological metaphors
- Genotype vs. phenotype
- Code, DNA, genes, Unix, Linux (SCO copyright issues - 'stolen genes')
- The wiki as a thing that grows
- Definitions of life, anti-entropy (negentropy), susceptability to the process of evolution
- Evolution: copies, errors, selection
- Memes: meta-purpose and propagation as the true purpose of an idea
- Darwin vs. Lamarck
- Baldwin and epigenesis
- Memetics and the disease model
- Endosymbiosis
- Mitochondria and chloroplasts
- Lichen
- Polydnavirus
- What is strong? What is virulent?
- Tao, Tai Chi and Aikido
- Speed
- Adaptability
- Force
- Endurance
- Endemic disease model: parasitism, symbosis and pervasiveness
- Wiki as textual favela (the Cardboard City Chumbawumba)
- Culture as endemic memetic infection
- Virulence and competition
- Stability and schisms
- Syncretism and new strains
- Emergent and engineered
- Hybridisation
- Voodoo and Candomble
- Grecoroman Gods
- Iroha
- Biodiversity, Internet ephemera and tropical rainforests
- The Internet and wikis as a medium for meme development
- Anecdotal evidence of effect of Internet on subcultures
- Online memetic conservation outlined (Baldwin revisited)
