The term and concept of meme first appeared in the 1976 book by Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. For Dawkins, memes are the cultural counterpart of genes: “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation...”

Human beings have always been transferring basic ideas from an individual to another, and in the process, these ideas have mutated, crossed over and adapted. The result has in time been called legend, saga, geste and today meme. But they have kept the same methods of propagation, where stories are being relayed by “story tellers”, shamans, troubadours, preachers, intellectuals and more recently journalists and analysts. In the propagation, a common evolution of these stories is the adjunction of a dose of “marvel” or “fear”, because obviously a good story is either frightening or marvelous…

I do not entirely agree with your limiting passed ways of communicating to one-to-one conversations. In my opinion, there was as much asymmetric and asynchronous conversation in any time as there is today. Fire gathering, assemblies, academies, “salons” have long existed, and allowed multiple conversations to weave into a larger whole. What the web is changing is the time line of these conversations, and by consequence the spread of these conversations. One could also argue that a larger number of individuals being able to read and write has also been an accelerating factor…

Alec is a businessman, and he would not be business savvy he if was not using all decent means at his disposal to improve his business. As long as it remains associated with a business ethic, there is nothing wrong with doing so. Asking prospects, customers of individuals to express opinion over one’s product is part of god marketing. It is just that the size of the resonance chamber has been vastly increased by the blogosphere, for a ridiculous cost when compared to traditional PR and marketing campaigns.

That said, the blogosphere does not free us from being vigilant and critical, as the amount of mutation, cross-over and adaptation have also increased in the same proportion as the signal. Not to forget the spread of “marvel” and “fear” I mentioned above. Filtering out the value maybe what makes the difference between doing business and being gullible…

Yes, blogging can be powerful as it shortens the time to assemble a wider breadth and variety of threads. Only time and talent makes a tapestry into a “chef d’oeuvre” though, otherwise you may have do undo much of the weaving. But this is no news…

P.S. Interesting piece Ken, although the Noah I remember was clipping his portable to a thick Ethernet cable ;)

Jean-Louis - I ahave to say people came running to see why I was laughing out loud You're of course right about Noah using an old thicknet vampire tap connecter. rofl

Thanks again for some incredibly thoughtful comments.Two points really jumped out at me.

I agree that the asymmetric and asynchronous conversations have always taken place. They get more visibility today. I think the net makes them more accessible, much like the way print media takes longer to distribute than electronic. The timeline fro information sharing has changed.

You mention the resonance chamber and I think the danger of the echo chamber effect often talked about on blogs. There's an intersting dichotomy of the resonance chamber bouncing and idea wherein the idea expands, and the echo chamber with everyone saying the same thing. Both exist online today, sometimes in balance and sometimes not.