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| There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs. |
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| Topic: Society |
11:38 pm EDT, Aug 2, 2004 |
Why do certain ideas become popular? The naive view is that it's because they're true, or at least justified. This fascinating book, influenced by evolutionary biology and epidemiology, is the first full-scale examination of some of the other reasons. Consider Aaron Lynch's example of optimism--it may not be true or warranted, but it tends to prevail because optimists tend to have more children to pass along their outlook to. Sometimes, Lynch points out, there is a paradoxical but predictable expansion-contraction pattern to the social spread of ideas. If nothing else, lobbyists need to look into this stuff to see which side their bread is really buttered on. Warning: this book is densely written. But it's worth the wade. Thought Contagion |
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| Topic: Science |
11:36 pm EDT, Aug 2, 2004 |
What is a meme? First coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 study The Selfish Gene, a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, and ways of plowing a field, throwing a baseball, or making a sculpture. It is also one of the most important--and controversial--concepts to emerge since Darwin's Origin of the Species. Here, Blackmore boldly asserts: "Just as the design of our bodies can be understood only in terms of natural selection, so the design of our minds can be understood only in terms of memetic selection." Indeed, The Meme Machine shows that once our distant ancestors acquired the crucial ability to imitate, a second kind of natural selection began: a survival of the fittest among competing ideas and behaviors. Those that proved most adaptive--making tools, for example, or using language--survived and flourished, replicating themselves in as many minds as possible. These memes then passed themselves on from generation to generation by helping to ensure that the genes of those who acquired them also survived and reproduced. Applying this theory to many aspects of human life, Blackmore brilliantly explains why we live in cities, why we talk so much, why we can't stop thinking, why we behave altruistically, how we choose our mates, and much more. With controversial implications for our religious beliefs, our free will, and our very sense of "self", this provocative book will be must reading any general reader or student interested in psychology, biology, or anthropology. The Meme Machine |
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| Topic: Science |
11:35 pm EDT, Aug 2, 2004 |
Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands of readers to rethink their beliefs about life. In his internationally bestselling, now classic volume, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains how the selfish gene can also be a subtle gene. The world of the selfish gene revolves around savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit, and yet, Dawkins argues, acts of apparent altruism do exist in nature. Bees, for example, will commit suicide when they sting to protect the hive, and birds will risk their lives to warn the flock of an approaching hawk. The Selfish Gene |
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Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think and Communicate |
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| Topic: Society |
11:34 pm EDT, Aug 2, 2004 |
In _The Selfish Gene_, Richard Dawkins sought to describe cultural evolution in biological terms with the newly coined term "meme." Here, Cambridge anthropologist Robert Aunger theorizes on the nature of this so-called "thought gene." In doing so, Aunger coins a term of his own, "neuromemetics," proposing that memes are in fact self-replicating electrical charges in the nodes of our brains. The author explains that the shift in perspective from Dawkins's purely social memetics to a memetics working at the intercellular level is akin to sociobiology's view of social behavior as a genetic trait subject to evolution. This is an ambitious book on a par with Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine. Unlike the handful of pop-culture treatments out there, Aunger steers clear of the popular image of the meme as a VD-like brain parasite passed by word of mouth. That said, this book is that rare hybrid of crossover science writing that carries enough intellectual punch to warrant thoughtful peer review, and yet should appeal to those ambitious general readers who are in the market for a megadose of mind candy. This rocks! 400 pages of serious thought about memetics. Amazon offers up the book's introduction for your review. Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think and Communicate |
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On Memes, and MemeStreams |
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| Topic: Society |
11:32 pm EDT, Aug 2, 2004 |
Vile wrote:
] Once again, we have a news story. Listen up, all you amateur
] reporters out there in memestreamsland, we can get the news
] from multiple (more reliable) sources. Please offer us some
] recommendations for art, literature, movies, music, et al. It's not about "news." It's not about "recommendations." It's about memes. That's why it's called MemeStreams. If it's recommendations you want, I suggest Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine, and Aaron Lynch's Thought Contagion, for starters. This is not a "web log." This is not a "collaborative filter." It's not about you. It's not about me. It's about memes. On Memes, and MemeStreams |
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US Warns of High Risk of Qaeda Attack |
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| Topic: War on Terrorism |
8:56 am EDT, Aug 2, 2004 |
The Bush administration on Sunday declared a high risk of terrorist attacks against financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas after receiving what it described as alarming information that operatives of Al Qaeda had conducted detailed reconnaissance missions at certain sites. "This information is about as specific as you can get ... chilling in its scope, in its detail, in its breadth." Suspects were found with blueprints and may have conducted a "test run" for an attack in recent days, collecting information on the flow of pedestrian traffic, possible escape routes, elevator schedules, neighborhood landmarks, the patterns and number of security personnel, details on surveillance cameras and relevant architectural details. The elevation of the threat level for the financial institutions was set off by the recent arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a 25-year-old Pakistani computer engineer, who had used and helped to operate a secret Qaeda communications system where information was transferred via coded messages. A companion article reports: "One senior American intelligence official said the information was more detailed and precise than any he had seen during his 24-year career in intelligence work." It continues: "Since his arrest, Mr. Khan has described an elaborate communications system that involves the use of high and low technology." Several episodes in the United States have recently drawn scrutiny from counterterrorism officials, including reports from passengers on a recent flight to Los Angeles about odd activity by a group of Syrian musicians. NYT finally mentions Flight 327 but says it was not a factor in raising the orange alert. NYT's David Rohde is now reporting from Karachi, Pakistan. US Warns of High Risk of Qaeda Attack |
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90 Percent of Afghans Registered to Vote |
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| Topic: Miscellaneous |
8:41 am EDT, Aug 2, 2004 |
Nine out of 10 eligible Afghans have signed up for landmark October elections, the United Nations said Sunday, a resounding endorsement of a democratic experiment supposed to help Afghanistan turn its back on years of debilitating war. ... except when the Afghan news media report that candidates are "sniping" at each other, they aren't referring to verbal attacks. WSJ ran a good week-in-review-style article last week entitled something like "Good news from Afghanistan" in which the reporters highlighted a litany of positive developments in the country. 90 Percent of Afghans Registered to Vote |
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| Topic: Politics and Law |
12:44 pm EDT, Aug 1, 2004 |
The 2004 Democratic convention had its moments, some of them quite good, if not all intentionally so. On Wednesday there was the speech by Dennis Kucinich -- a reminder, perhaps, that the primary system really does work, even though an alarming number of Yale millionaires manage to slip through the net. A Show Called Hope |
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| Topic: High Tech Developments |
11:29 pm EDT, Jul 31, 2004 |
Since the late 1990s, technology markets have declined dramatically. Responding to the changing business climate, companies use strategies of open innovation: acquiring technologies from outside, marketing their technologies to other companies, and outsourcing manufacturing. But open innovation is not enough; it is mainly a way to run a business to its endgame. By itself, open innovation results in razor-thin profits from products that compete as commodities. Businesses also need a path to renewal. No one ever achieved a breakthrough with open innovation. A breakthrough creates something new or satisfies a previously undiscovered need. Radical breakthroughs often have uses and effects far beyond what their inventors had in mind. Breakthroughs can launch new industries or transform existing ones. Our capacity for creating breakthroughs depends on a combination of science, imagination, and business; the next great waves of innovation will come from organizations that get this combination right. During periods of rapid economic growth, companies and investors focus on the short term and forget where breakthroughs come from. Without appropriate engagement and reinvestment, the innovation ecology breaks down. Today, universities, technology companies, government funding agencies, venture capitalists, and corporate research laboratories need to foster the conditions in which breakthroughs arise. In Breakthrough, Mark and Barbara Stefik show us how innovation works. Drawing on stories from repeat inventors and managers of technology, they uncover the best practices for inventing the future. This book is for readers who want to know how inventors do their work, how people become inventors, and how businesses can create powerful cultures of innovation. Breakthrough |
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Shilling Recommender Systems for Fun and Profit |
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| Topic: Technology |
6:13 pm EDT, Jul 31, 2004 |
Recommender systems have emerged in the past several years as an effective way to help people cope with the problem of information overload. One application in which they have become particularly common is in e-commerce, where recommendation of items can often help a customer find what she is interested in and, therefore can help drive sales. Unscrupulous producers in the never-ending quest for market penetration may find it profitable to shill recommender systems by lying to the systems in order to have their products recommended more often than those of their competitors. This paper explores four open questions that may affect the effectiveness of such shilling attacks: which recommender algorithm is being used, whether the application is producing recommendations or predictions, how detectable the attacks are by the operator of the system, and what the properties are of the items being attacked. The questions are explored experimentally on a large data set of movie ratings. Taken together, the results of the paper suggest that new ways must be used to evaluate and detect shilling attacks on recommender systems. Shilling Recommender Systems for Fun and Profit |
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