Read an interesting book, The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P Huntington. He makes a powerful case for a new world order based on culture and claims that the world looks much more like the worlds when I play Sid Meier's Civilizations than anything resembling the old cold war division. According to him it is most useful for policy purposes to see the world as composed of 5-7 civilizations that play their own game and shifting allegiances whenever suitable without a stable friends & foes division.
He mentions specifically that the most dangerous clashes will come from Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance and Sinic assertiveness. He is probably right about that. These three cultures have all long history and are all convinced of the "correct way of life" both on an individual and on an institutional level.
It seems that the strongest memes are cultures.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
Which memes survive?
Continuing the previous post this is my best guess to answer which memes disintegrate and which not.
In telecommunications there are two main ways to get a message through intact via a noisy channel, redundancy or checksum/error correction.
The same would apply to memes so one way would be to keep the message short (minimize the possible mutations) and repeat it often. The other method would be to build in some error correction into the message, for instance in forms of rhymes and verse to minimize the possible mutations that still would fit the schema and that still would make sense.
During the time when oral tradition was the only way to carry stories forward, most (if not all) stories that have survived to this day use a strict form of verse as a method of error correction. The other stories disintegrated.
In telecommunications there are two main ways to get a message through intact via a noisy channel, redundancy or checksum/error correction.
The same would apply to memes so one way would be to keep the message short (minimize the possible mutations) and repeat it often. The other method would be to build in some error correction into the message, for instance in forms of rhymes and verse to minimize the possible mutations that still would fit the schema and that still would make sense.
During the time when oral tradition was the only way to carry stories forward, most (if not all) stories that have survived to this day use a strict form of verse as a method of error correction. The other stories disintegrated.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Memes and networks
Memes, the information equivalent of genes, are either successful or not so successful depending on how well they replicate in a network.
Is a weak meme finding the central nodes more efficient in spreading than strong memes finding the peripheral ones?
Which memes disintegrate into Chinese Whispers and which stay intact? What are the characteristics of a successful meme?
Possible applications:
Computer viruses
Viral marketing
Fashion
Reputation in social networking
Political messages
Word of mouth
Is a weak meme finding the central nodes more efficient in spreading than strong memes finding the peripheral ones?
Which memes disintegrate into Chinese Whispers and which stay intact? What are the characteristics of a successful meme?
Possible applications:
Computer viruses
Viral marketing
Fashion
Reputation in social networking
Political messages
Word of mouth
Monday, September 3, 2007
The intangible asset of the firm
Isn't so that the innovation value of the company is directly correlated to the number of links, not the number of nodes?
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