The life of a fad LO6082

Ben Granade (bgranade@customcpu.com)
Mon, 11 Mar 1996 10:54:27 -0900

If Price, in LO6041, talked about fads

>Stage 5. Somewhere in here a switch occurs. Remember the objective -
>infected minds [believers if you like]. With that as the performance
>measure utility, results delivered, stops being CSF One. If the fad has
>enough momentum it is more important that people talk about it and 'buy
>it' than that they get any real benefit out of doing so. The fads that win
>through to this stage have it made until disillusion sets in then they
>gradually wither and die. But, as fads, they know no different. Their role
>in life is to go on replicating.

the way that fads are described isvery similar to the concept of a meme (R
Dawkins, 1976, The Selfish Gene) A meme is a cognitive-behavioral pattern
that can be transmitted from one individual to another through
communication. It is a contagious information pattern that replicates by
parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing
them to propagate the pattern.

A joke is a good example of a meme, as is a fad. Being infected with the
meme causes you to want to pass it on, in the way that hearing a good joke
makes you want to tell it to someone else.

A good primer on memes and memetics can be found at the Principa
Cybernetica page

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/memes.html

(the character following pespmc is a one, not an el)

Ben Granade, CQA bgranade@customcpu.com
Management Analysis Officer (907) 343-4554
Municipality of Anchorage, Alaska

If you're not having fun...you're not doing it right!

-- 

bgranade@customcpu.com (Ben Granade)

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>