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 Tuesday, 5 March 2002
Meme Bombs.
Now that I have edited and designed the presentation of a number of older written pieces, and have placed them on this website as PDFs for people to download, my thoughts have turned to a number of other pieces I have wanted to write for quite some time. First, though, I had to work out an effective way of presenting them, and that I have done now.
The next set of pieces is something I’ve given the working title to of
Meme Bombs.
They’re one-page graphic, headline and text pieces that elaborate on an idea that I want to explore and communicate.
Here are some definitions of meme, from
Dictionary.com.
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A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
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Richard Dawkins’s term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating them much as viruses do.
Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some ideas survive better than others; ideas can mutate through, for example, misunderstandings; and two ideas can recombine to produce a new idea involving elements of each parent idea.
The term is used especially in the phrase meme complex denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organised belief system, such as a religion. However, meme is often misused to mean meme complex.
Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become more important than biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons.
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An idea considered as a replicator, esp. with the connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do. Used esp. in the phrase meme complex denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organized belief system, such as a religion. This lexicon is an (epidemiological) vector of the hacker subculture meme complex; each entry might be considered a meme. However, meme is often misused to mean meme complex. Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has superseded biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons.
More about this later.
1:24:06 PM 
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Popular Myths About The Macintosh.
Great little Apple web page debunking those nonsensical popular myths many people like to believe about the Macintosh computer.
1:08:59 PM
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More Flash MX News.
More news items with further details on products associated with the Flash MX roll out.
12:43:32 PM
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Maya 4 Book Just Arrived.
The UPS man just arrived with a review copy of Maya 4 Fundamentals, written by Jim Lammers and Lee Gooding for New Riders, ISBN #: 0735711895.
I will be publishing a review of this book soon, on this website in the Reviews section. Its arrival is quite timely, especially given Alias|wavefront has now released its free Maya Personal Learning Edition, which I have already listed as a recommended item of software for people wishing to teach or learn multimedia design—see the PDF in this website’s Resources section.
Now I just need a review copy of a good Cinema 4D XL book!
12:27:21 PM
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Flash MX Announced.
Here a number of useful links for information about Flash MX, as it has been renamed instead of Flash 6.
- Macromedia’s Flash web page.
- Macromedia’s Flash 6 player download page, which you will need to view the Feature Tour below.
- Macromedia’s Feature Tour.
- Macromedia’s sign-up page to be notified when Flash MX ships.
- Future.net’s Flash MX discussion.
- Expn.com—apparently the video fpootage has been edited together with Flash MX.
- WebMonkey’s Flash MX overview.
11:48:16 AM
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My Time With Radio UserLand.
I am enjoying my time using UserLand’s Radio 8 each morning to update this weblog each morning, but there is no way I would recommend it in its present form to anyone who has not already worked out how to publish on the web in the older and even more labour-intensive ways.
When Radio 8 first came out late last year, a few users mused about whether Apple would want to add it to the collection of software you get when you buy a new iMac or PowerMac. Apple already provides a number of free and easy to use software products with each new computer, such as iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and now iDVD. Their free online tools include iTools where you can build your own web home page and more.
But there is no way I would put a copy of UserLand Radio 8 into the hands even of someone who uses all the above software. It takes far longer to make my weblog posts each day than I would like. I insist that my text be well formatted and each post well-designed, and that means writing the entry in plain text and then adding plenty of HTML mark-up by hand.
After making a post Radio 8 is prone to screwing up the rendering of the code as it is published, so all sorts of glitches can appear and then you have to go into the page and edit the crap out, or republish your original post over the one that’s just been screwed up by the program.
Then there’s the question of extending Radio’s capabilities. Many people in the Radio community are programmers and have been making some great free tools to add to it, but try reading their description of how to do that and you may be as lost as I am right now. They’re scripting geeks and make plenty of unjustifiable assumptions.
It is a salutary lesson to talk about computers with the average computer user from time to time. So many people use a computer every day in their work, and yet if you ask most of them whether they use a Macintosh or a Windows computer I bet they will not even be able to tell you which one they have in front of them.
Try it yourself sometime!
11:20:53 AM
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A Beautiful Bit Of Acting.
I often listen to ABC Radio’s talk and news shows as I work each morning, especially now that there is more content about Australian art, culture and society than ever before.
Just now I heard someone talk about movies—any and all movies—as mindless entertainment. Since when does entertainment fail to engage the mind? What is wrong with entertainment, anyway? And why tar-and-feather all movies with the same label?
Movies are the most effective story-telling vehicles of all time, combining as they do deep and resonant emotions with well-told tales of other people’s lives, if they are done skilfully and with that purpose in mind. Or if not, then they can be terrific entertainment anyway, although eminently forgettable the moment you leave the cinema or put away the DVD.
All that aside, I went to see A Beautiful Mind yesterday as I badly needed a break, and previews were playing at a cinema a long walk distant. Russell Crowe does an excellent job of acting, in the old-fashioned sense, and that is appropriate to this film as it is an old style of movie, a biopic.
The makers are people who cherish old kinds of values—love, hope and redemption. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Russell Crowe is a shoo-in for an Oscar.
A Beautiful Mind.
10:34:11 AM
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