Footnotes

The agent changes by learning something new, the information changes by the knowledge the agent already had. Therefore, a meme reaching an agent, will be transmitted in a changed form. Thus, cultural evolution is Lamarckian: characteristics acquired during the lifetime of the meme’s carrier can be transmitted to later carriers selectively, depending on their fitness. [...]

Purple. Polka dot. Grimy white. And even as the bra colors went viral — wildly so — cyber-arguments erupted about what it all meant. Was so openly and brazenly posting something as intimate as one’s bra color an attempt to raise breast cancer awareness? Or was it all just another Facebook time-suck, another “send your [...]

I want you to imagine back in the early days of newspapers and magazines how the effect of coupons could be measured. A store owner put a coupon in a local newspaper, and then counted up the coupons that came back into the store – immediately that store owner had an understanding of the impact [...]

Never before has it been possible to see such quick paced change across the Google SERP.
At this years imedia summit Amnesia have started a social experiment in the form of @Hunvalski.
The idea of this experiment is to see the amount of search results that can be generated for the term Hunvalski (a term that previously [...]

There is an eBaying of content going on, as people repurpose stuff they find in the digital garage and attic that is the Web. Some people will become the new scavengers, looking through the detritus of the web for things to reuse and remix. Some will build the places where they look, [...]

A rhizomatic network is one with multiple non-hierarchical entry and exit points. Here’s a particularly compelling visual demonstration: (video)
Return to Page

Much more about using triggers can be found in Kevin Hogan’s book Covert Persuasion and Joseph Sugarman’s book Triggers. Dave Lakhani released his book on Persuasion after we’d completed the manuscript for The Art of Memetics, or we would have included it in our print edition’s bibliography. We include it here to rectify [...]

Wilson, Robert A. (1990) Quantum Psychology is an important text, as well as Farrell, Nick (2005) Gathering the Magic in finding groups and understanding the effect joining a group can have on the self and one’s self-image.
Return to Page

Edward witnessed an interaction very similar to the simplified description above. The more flexible male shut down his competitor to the point that the competitor developed a new option; he drank until he passed out and didn’t have to compete anymore.
Return to Page

Please bear in mind that we are not discounting his work, far from it. Thought Contagion, along with Richard Brodie’s Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme, are profoundly accessible works on the way that belief grows and manifests in culture. (Add MindControlMarketing and you’ve got the three books necessary to [...]

Feedback loops can be thought of as self-perpetuating situations, or active tautological events. The study of language evolution provides a way of thinking about the effect of feedback loops over time.
Note: We were both unaware of the book I Am A Strange Loop (2007) by Douglas Hofstadler at the time [...]

Lynch, Aaron. (1996) Thought Contagion. In this book, his analysis of Mormonism through the lens of memetics places emphasis on generational transmission, and highlights these factors as evolutionary pressures.
 
Return to Page

Or that the communication methods themselves are predisposed toward carrying a specific type of “social change” meme – twitter, for example, was predisposed to carry a ‘twitter revolution’ meme, regardless of any real world situation.
Return to Page

A capsid is the outer protein shell of a virus, responsible for protecting the internal operating system of the virus, detecting suitable surrounding carriers for viral infection (i.e. cell walls) and for forming an opening into the suitable carriers. In memetics, the capsid is referring to the casing of a meme, or the point of [...]

Return to Page

model of trend growth

Anderson, Chris. (2006) The Long Tail.
Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

Return to Page

This is, indeed, a shout-out: Rigorous Intuition is an interesting example of apophenionic symbology and hyperstition at play.  Commentary on a culture and it’s institutions has become a kind of myth-making in its own right, and this particular blog deconstructs contemporary events in a very unique way.
Return to Page