ORB Visualization
(soon)
Communication to someone
2/1/2004 8:43 AM
You recognize that the processes, that one sometimes has to be involved with, are sometimes illusionary.
I have conjectured that possible funding from DARPA to establish the memetic science is an illusion. It is an illusion to think that DARPA and its handlers could manage to achieve a contribution to something that might be called memetic science. They do not have the time, and they do not have the background.
They do not have the time or the background. An increasing urgency comes from the repeated failures of the Information Technology that has been developed by industry and consultants. The Powers That Be will soon recognize that the core problem is in how funds are spent, not in there not being sufficient funding or time.
I, and you, are struggling with two major problems
1) why is the intelligence vetting paradigm failing on a regular basis?
2) and how, or perhaps should, memetic science be developed?
As we struggle with these two problem, we do not think with a clear mind about how they might be solved because of the pressure to deliver more of the same.
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/MST/seven.htm
My sense is that "memetic science" should not be the term that is used. The term "meme" is burdened with a large number of non-serious people. These people are for various reasons not serious about developing real science. The interface with esoterics is a problem. The presence of wealthy individuals who play games is a problem. In many cases, they simply do not have the academic background; and are often pissed off at academia for not working for them as individuals.
Both sides are at fault, and both sides have valid concerns. So these people behavior poorly in the relevant e-forums, for example.
However, these same forums have lurkers who are able to make substantial intellectual contributions if there were a National Project.
There is a need to gather, or scan, the principled scholarship on memetics, and to then be able to bring leading scholarship into an informed decision as to how to proceed.
The need is to create a science of knowledge systems, and knowledge sharing. Let the concept of memetics be regarded as a good start, but lacking qualities what one sees in biosemiotics, social semiotics, evolutionary psychology, cultural anthropology, ecological psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.