Thursday, December 5, 2019

Red-eyed treefrog: Significance of the metaphor of 'virus' itself to the idea of meme * * * 'Memorial flowers for Gordon at the church today from the three of us' re questions of CONSCIOUSNESS in terms of writing, psychotherapy, Yoga and philosophy * * * How consciousness as awareness 'works' in brain (s) with processes of virality in social media is another related interesting question



Scott MacLeod helianth@gmail.com

Wed, Dec 4, 6:38 PM (15 hours ago)
to Rishi, Tarleton, Scott, Gohar, air-l@listserv.aoir.org
Gohar, Rishi, Tarleton and AoIR,

While your questions and the book Rishi mentions touch on virality, I'd like to bring up the significance of the metaphor of 'virus' itself to the idea of meme ... I'm reminded of the rabies virus in these regards, which infects its host (am thinking, for ex., raccoon) to become aggressive and thirsty which microscopic virus infection leads the raccoon to bite another mammal, thus spreading the virus - or meme, perchance. It's a vivid example. 

Here's Dawkins who, I think, coined the word meme re gene in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene" (p. 12?) - 

"Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically," writes Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene". "When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say, 'belief in life after death' is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of people all over the world."

I'm not clear in the information age how social media memes could be newly studied "not just metaphorically but technically," but it's something  MIT OCW-centric wiki World University & School (in all 7111 known living languages) would like to examine re developing a single realistic virtual earth for brain science too - https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/  (and at the cellular and atomic levels - am thinking Google Street View with time slider, Maps, Earth with TensorFlow, with avatar bots for species and their brains). In what ways could we begin to see how ideas in the brain stimulate neural firing - and with brain wave headsets, and dreadlock EEG headsets, for example, to begin - and from in front of our computers, especially? And for example here - https://twitter.com/hashtag/RealisticVirtualEarthForSTEM?src=hashtag_click .

Cheers, Scott


On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 9:30 AM Scott MacLeod <helianth@gmail.com> wrote:
Just searched on "Manuel Castells and virality" (am a Castellian in many ways with regards to the Information Age), and found: 

"Castells emphasizes that the idea is, we’re not alone in the world. These movements are organized by anyone, they achieve Virality through the connection of the minds." ... from ...  https://civic.mit.edu/2014/02/20/manuel-castells-the-space-of-autonomy-cyberspace-and-urban-space-in-networked-social/ -

"Virality

Karine Nahon, in her recent book Going Viral (http://www.amazon.com/Going-Viral-Karine-Nahon/dp/0745671292) describes the constant process of virality in networked communication. In the movement context, anything you start in one place has the possibility of emerging in other locations. “Tunisia is the Solution” was a slogan across the Arab uprisings. The old slogan was “Islam is the solution.” In Syria people rose up saying “We’ll do it like in Egypt.” In Bahrain, the same: replicating. Castells emphasizes that the idea is, we’re not alone in the world. These movements are organized by anyone, they achieve Virality through the connection of the minds."

Scott 
Seeking to 'viralize' MIT OCW-centric wiki World University and School, as well:

On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 10:13 AM Rishi Arora <rishigarora@uchicago.edu> wrote:
A few years old but big fan of this one - Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks (Tony Sampson)




From: Air-L <air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of Scott MacLeod <helianth@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2019 11:26:36 AM
To: Tarleton L. Gillespie <tlg28@cornell.edu>; Scott MacLeod <sgkmacleod@worlduniversityandschool.org>
Cc: air-l@listserv.aoir.org <air-l@listserv.aoir.org>
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Some questions by a student
Here's "Going Viral" in the ACM Digital Library -
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2601815 - and a book review about it -
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2014/06/09/book-review-going-viral-by-karine-nahon-and-jeff-hemsley/
.

And here's "The World Made Meme" -
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/world-made-meme - and a book review about it
-
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/51d7/8b688d48ae40e5c85f1b877573f9a26f36d8.pdf
- too.

I find Milner's definition of meme helpful - “multimodal texts that
facilitate participation by reappropriation, by balancing a fixed premise
with novel expression” (p. 14) ( in the above book review, and with regard
to the 'replicating cultural unit' idea in this 'meme' label in blog -
https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/meme).

Scott
- http://worlduniversityandschool.org/AcademicPress.html
- worlduniversityandschool.org (like best STEM CC-4 OCW / OpenCourseWare in
5 languages, with Wikipedia in 300 languages).


On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 6:26 AM Tarleton L. Gillespie <tlg28@cornell.edu>
wrote:

> I would direct the student to the books Going Viral, by Karine Nahon and
> Jeff Hemsley, and The World Made Meme, by Ryan Milner.
>
>
>
>
>
> On 11/19/19, 6:33 PM, "Air-L on behalf of Gohar F. Khan" <
> air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org on behalf of gohar.feroz@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     Greetings,
>
>     A student asked me to provide my opinion on the following questions.
> Some
>     of these questions are easy to answer but others require independent
>     research inquiry (and data) to answer it.
>
>     I will appreciate your thoughts and possible responses to these
> questions,
>     if possible. Or perhaps share some articles which may have answered
> some of
>     your questions.
>
>
>        1. What is the ‘definition’ of a viral trend?
>        2. What qualities define a social media (viral) trend?
>        3. How are social media trends usually started?
>        4. How do social media trends become global trends?
>        5. What social media platforms display most of these trends?
>        6. How long do social media trends usually last for? Why?
>        7. What causes a trend to lose popularity?
>        8. What have been some of the most significant viral trends in the
> past
>        decade?
>        9. What were the more popular social media platforms in the
> beginning of
>        the 2010’s?
>        10. Are there any viral trends that have caused big changes
> socially,
>        either positively or negatively, in the past decade? If so, what
> trend was
>        it and what was the effect?
>        11. What viral trends do you know of from the past decade?
>        12. What are the current most popular social media platforms?
>
>
>     Thanks,
>     Gohar
>
>
>     --
>
>
>     Dr. Gohar Khan | Senior Lecturer of Digital Business | Undergraduate
> and
>     Graduate Convenor for Digital Business   |   School of Management &
>     Marketing  |  Faculty of Management  |  University of Waikato
>
>     Private Bag 3105  |  Hamilton 3240  |  New Zealand
>     | +64 7 838 4233  | gohar.khan@waikato.ac.nz  | office: MSB.2.32D  /
> Web:
>     gfkhan.wordpress.com
>
>
>     Check out my books on social media analytics and digital marketing
> analytics
>     _______________________________________________
>     The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list
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* *
Hi Gohar, and AoIR,

Thanks for your email as well an hour ago. I've explored this a bit in this blog entry - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2019/12/red-eyed-treefrog-significance-of.html - and loosely too in relation to ideas about consciousness (as awareness in a western Philosophy of Mind sense, but in other ways as well), and in the 'meme' label here.

How consciousness as awareness 'works' in brain (s) with processes of virality in social media is another related interesting question.

Scott
- https://www.amazon.com/author/scottmacleodworlduniversity
Excited to announce that my book 'To the Dance or the Pools? Virtually! ~ ... in Virtual Reality' from @WUaSPress will be out this month - where in poetry I explore #Harbin, #Consciousness & in VR Glasses ~Artwork on cover is from a #VirtualWorld @HarbinBook #RealisticVirtualHarbin ~

https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/1202407507093647361?s=20
https://twitter.com/HarbinBook/status/1202422381421060096?s=20






* * *

Memorial flowers for Gordon at the church today from the three of us


Scott MacLeod
9:48 AM (4 minutes ago)
to Janie, Sandy

Hi Ma, and Sandy,

Thought I might send these ideas to you, Ma, in the 'writing' email thread, but I think I'll do so in this thread.

Re consciousness, I think both in writing, as well as in talk psychotherapy, awareness emerges and that this can be so edifying. (Am exploring consciousness questions these days some - and am exploring even beginning teaching Yoga again here in Canyon on a Saturday or Sunday morning). Appreciating what we can learn from becoming conscious.

With writing, when a writer helps make a reader aware of something one hadn't thought of before, this can be fascinating, and perhaps a reason why people read even. (Am appreciative too of the freedom of the press in this country, and the legacy of libraries here and around the world - as well as the myriad of books there are these days. C'est incroyable! ... looked up etymology - https://www.etymonline.com/word/incroyable - so I looked up its meaning in English - : "too extraordinary and improbable to be believed").

With (licensed by state) psychotherapy (eg Lacanian psychoanalysis combined with John Money's writings too?), becoming conscious of something can lead to changing a behavior (which could be problematic for oneself or to others), or ways of thinking or feeling.

Yoga has long had a focus on consciousness too, but it's mired in conceptions of the divine, and religious narratives from India, and, yet, it also includes ideas for becoming aware or sentient, and even for creating well-being of consciousness. Am also appreciative that in India (historically too), philosophical questions of consciousness are bound with, in one way or another, moral or ethical questions, and in terms of well-being too (and I write this from California).

In my ongoing thinking about consciousness re questions in philosophy, (western philosophy of Mind, it's sometimes called), am aware of how challenging it is at this point to explain awareness knowledgeably, scientifically, - personally or subjectively too - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2019/11/chameleon-vision-poem-to-dance-or-pools.html?m=0. And am appreciative too that people are thinking rigorously about these questions.

Re Dad, am appreciative too that after he was impaired in Belize with the first (and then second! spontaneous) subdural hematoma, that we did Yoga together in Pittsburgh, and that he was able to find a state of meditation (eg he elicited the relaxation response) ... a kind of ease of consciousness.

So, am appreciative once again, Ma, of your sharing these flowers in memory of Dad - re consciousness in these regards too - and on behalf of the 3 of us, and in the Unitarian church, where Dad's memorial was held. Thank you.

Just some thoughts about consciousness on a Thursday morning in December :) Am hoping you're both having good weeks.


Love, Scott


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