Memes

In one of those weird convergence of events, the concept of memes has risen to the front of my mind recently.  First, I was "tagged" (more on that in a bit) by Sam Smith as part of Philip Young's Scoop project. Second, I was reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins for school, and ran into his chapter: Memes: the new replicators.  I hadn't realized he coined the term!  Third, in my preparation for my keynote presentation at the Euroblog 2006 Research Symposium on Friday, during which I'll be discussion my network framework, I was musing on the need for network simulation tools when it became very clear that "memes" were something I needed to understand much better!  So, you'll probably be hearing more about them as I dig into the space.

Philip is also investigating memes, and working on a little experiment.  He has a blog called Scoop!: Journalists in Fiction and has begun tagging people to request their suggestions for characters who are journalists in European fiction.  He tagged three people, and one of those three tagged me.  He is tracking the results to see how this "meme" spreads.

I will tag my three people in a moment, but first a thought on the word "tag", which I think is problemmatic here.  The word is being used in a couple of different ways already, mostly being keywords linked to a post, a photo, a podcast etc. which are aggregated via Technorati, del.icio.us (where they are really social bookmarks, which should be distinguished from tags), Flickr and other places.  I believe Philip used the word tag based on the children's game ("tag you're it").  I think it is rather confusing to use it in deliberate meme spreading (meme-engineering?).

So, what could be an alternative?  How do we designate someone as "it" online?  Perhaps we can use the word "ping" a la: "I'll ping you when I'm done."  But that is perhaps too technical for general consumer use.  "Designate" sounds too heavy.  "Tap" perhaps too physical for the online world.  I am pretty sure I have seen the word "nudge" used over the past year.  Maybe "memed", as in "I've been memed?"  Heh.

Any suggestions?

As to my contribution to the Scoop! meme?  How about Derkhan Blueday, art-critic for the Beacon and secret correspondent for the illegal Runagate Rampant in China Mieville's Perdido Street Station?

My three tags/nudges/whatever:

Ewan McIntosh, EduBlogs
David Tebbutt, Teblog
Suw Charman, Chocolate and Vodka

Comments

[Stephen Davies]

At school, we never used the phrase: "tag you're it" - we used: "tig you're it". We called the game where you have to tap someone physically on the back 'Tiggy'.

Maybe we could say we're 'tigging' them as opposed to 'tagging' them to stop the confusion?

Or would that sound too cheesy?

[Philip Young]

Thanks for this, Elizabeth. Tag wasn't my idea - in fact Stephen had to explain it to me! We need a word that means to deliberately hand on a small but meaningful piece of information to chosen people. Apart from the problem that it is confused with the qute sensible use of tag by Technorati etc it doesn't capture the sense of what we are examining - in the playground game, children run away to avoid being tagged whereas this is about handing something of value to people you think will make use of it. Soenthing more akin to a tip, but that's taken with hat-tip.

[Katie]

What a coicidence. Robert French was just trying to explain to his survey research class what a meme is. I still do not understand what a meme is or how it is supposed to be used. I would like to know more about it though. I look forward to reading your blog posts in the next couple of weeks to see what you come up with while you are studying the topic in greater detail.
I agree with you and those others who have commented.

Words such as tag or nudge can too easily be confused with other activities. There needs to be a word that can be used to describe such an invitation that everyone will be able to know what it relates to.

[Tina Lang-Stuart]

On memes, please see Pete Cashmore and his last post on Mashable (http://mashable.com) on everything from memediggers to memetrackers. Very comprehensive stuff.

[David Tebbutt]

Hi Elizabeth, Thanks for 'tagging' me. Stuart Bruce - one of Philip Young's three taggees tagged me.

I believe that your tag completes the blogocircle.

I couldn't remember three PR people or journalists who weren't the heroes of the books, so I fell at the first hurdle. As I've done here, I just commented on Stuart's blog. (Thereby breaking the chain-letter effect.)

Who are your other two heroes/heroines?

[Serge Cornelus]

Hi Elizabeth, looking forward to it. It being the Euroblog Symposium, not the fact of 'being it', wether tagged, or tigged, or memed, or whatever... ;-) I could suggest the word 'gejost' (past participle of jossen) to you, but that's probably too Flemish for general use and has a bit of a negative feel as well. A popular word over here, nevertheless... Apart from that: memes do remind of me sometimes (not in your case Philip, I was charmed and challenged by the request) of chain letters you get via e-mail. They give you that double feeling of both 'oh no, I don't feel like passing this on' and 'I guess I should so in order not to feel guilty about it'. If memetics is the future, then I'm out of the blogosphere ;-D...

[David Phillips]

I am not convinced about memes (http://www.managementclarity.com/memes_2.htm).
The idea that a concept has life and death in its own right and could be 'selfish', that is would propogate its carrier, could be a reason for cultures to emerge and flourish, morph and re-emerge and or die.

It would be a good theory for understanding how languages emerge and change but does it account for the change in meaning?

[Constantin Basturea]

More about meme's definition/ history/ bibliography:

- A Brief Overview and History of Memetics: http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/overview.html
- http://thedailymeme.com/what-is-a-meme/

"We need a word that means to deliberately hand on a small but meaningful piece of information to chosen people."

Something like passing the baton? :) - see "relay race", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relay_race

[Elizabeth Albrycht]

I wish you all could have been with Serge and I as we walked the streets of Stuttgart trying to think up an appropriate name for this "passing of the baton." It was completely hilarious (if a tad lowbrow). I don't think we came up with anything faboo, but we had fun! In fact, I can't remember all of the words we discussed...

Thanks for passing on the links to resources. I will write something "thinky" on this topic soon.