Eleven days after posting digest 565 with LO6082 finally reached me hence
delayed response to Ben Grenade's comment on my life of a fad.
[Host's Note: Sorry, If, about the delay. I do understand part of it.
LO6082 was sent by Ben on 3/11 and was in the queue for the week that LO
was off-the-air. Then, Digest #565 was delayed by the mysterious gnomes of
email for three days. I've asked our vendor, World, to look into this
second aspect.]
Ben you said
>the way that *I described fads* is very similar to the concept of a meme>
Thanks Ben. My comments on fads were in fact drawn from a paper on memes
being presented to this years ECLO meeting in May. I do not think we will
understand fads, or for that matter organisations and learning until we
grasp the reality of memes and start looking at fads, mental models etc.
etc. from the meme's perspective. The meme is just a replicator seeking,
blindly, its own replication. Out of the interaction and interconnection
of memes emerges organisation exactly as organic organisation emerges out
of the interconnection of genes bent on their own replication. It was
Bateson, I think, who first said *Evolution is Learning* and learning is
equally how memes, and the replicative structures they build [aka
organisations] evolve. Trying to understand the similarities - and
differences - between organisms and organisations as complex adaptive,
self-organising, emergent, autopoietic or whatever else you like to call
them without appreciating memes,is like trying to understand evolution
without appreciating genes
--If Price PewleyFort@eworld.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>