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October 26, 2004
Media Watch: Meme madness
by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
Now that The New York Times has given its seal of approval, does that mean the Web-as-meme-machine metaphor has peaked, or will it share the limelight for a few more months with "blog," the other trope recently pushed to the forefront of public consciousness?
"Memes (the word rhymes with dreams and is short for mimemes, from the word mimetic) are infectious ideas or any other things that spread by imitation from person to person - a jingle, a joke, a fashion, the smiley face or the concept of hell," writes Sarah Boxer in "Buzzing the Web on a Meme Machine."
Her article includes a host of links to help keep track of the latest memes ... plus instructions on how to propagate your own meme, chain-letter style.
Google has passed Yahoo! in stock valuation, reaching giddy heights that were just beginning to seem possible when the first wave of Web pioneers adopted "meme" from Richard Dawkins and other deep thinkers.
The meme concept has been bubbling around the Internet for well over a decade and will now, it seems, boil over in the rebirth of mass media fever for all things WWW.
Pass it along.
Links:
Buzzing the Web on a Meme Machine by Sarah Boxer, The New York Times, 26 October 2004
October 26, 2004 09:01 AM
