Am still working on Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene, and I have finally gotten to the chapter where he introduces the idea of the meme. He introduces the idea of the meme as a way of trying to show that his ideas about the selfish gene have implications outside of DNA molecules and biology, and that this model of a replicator ‘evolving’ can be applied to different types of replicators. Bad summary, but good enough for my point here. Anyway, Dawkins argues that even though memes and genes are very different, in order for them both to ‘survive and evolve’, so to speak, they need to have three characteristics: longevity, fecundity and copying-fidelity.

For my dissertation I want to think about viral memes in particular, memes that spread and evolve quickly and in fast quantity ala Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell says that for something to spread virally, three types of people are needed as “carriers” (more Dawkins’ term than Gladwell’s): connectors, mavens and salesmen. I wonder how and where these 6 criteria intersect. Also it would be an interesting exercise to see if connectors, mavens and salesmen could be used in Dawkin’s theories about gene replication. I don’t think they would because genes are biological replicators and memes are cultural, but it would be fun to see if they did intersect.

I know that to those reading this, you must be begging for definitions to my 6 terms, and at a later date I’ll come back and define them. Right now, though, I gotta get back to Dawkins before the kids descend form school!

I am reading Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene. I’ve only just begun but already it is making me think of connections to Shirky’s idea of altruism and a sort of “pay it forward” that is arising in online communities full of people who barely, if at all, know each other. I haven’t read Shirky’s newest book, but I think ti wold shed more light on this idea. *sigh* so many books, so little time!

One other interesting side note is that Dawkin’s talks about Game Theory, but not the game theory I think of ala Ian Bogast, James Gee, etc. Rather, it is the game theory found in the field of Mathematics. I wonder how different/similar these two theories are.

Anyway, just things to think of at a later date

They other day I was WOWing when the leader of my guild, Cynthia Haynes (although I think of her as Norandor ) was simultaneously giving a presentation on GAC, Gaming Across the Curriculum. I’ve heard of WAC, but not GAC, and I thought this was a wonderful and intriguing idea.  Not just because I love gaming, but because it also supports Jenkin’s et al’s criteria for the skills needed by students to be able to be productive and active members in a participatory culture.

Last week I attended my first webinar through HASTAC. It was entitled “Crisis and Conflict in the Media” was was bout how to handle the media’s reaction when an online project you are publishing garners negative publicity. It webinar was aimed at a group of Digital Learning scholars who had recently been chosen to have their various projects “go live” on a large scale, and the webinar was intended to help them handle any unforeseen or unfortunate response.

Not being one of the people chosen to have a project launched publicly, the webinar was not directly pertinent to me; however, it was interesting. In particular, I heard for the first time about the outrage industry.  Outrage industry is defined by Jeffery M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj as “individual enterprises, ranging from enormous media empires to lone bloggers, [who] collectively generate political mudslinging”, which they claim is often “on a scale unprecedented in American history.” Essentially it describes people who go looking for examples in the public that confirm their grievances about their particular political soap box, only to then hold those examples up for ridicule and condemnation, and so generate “outrage” over those examples.

The other thing that was brought up in the webinar was about the power of the blog. The speaker mentioned that your blog is a source of power because it allows you to counter publicly any negative accusations and/or as a way of making your own side of the issue heard. I never really thought of a blog like this, which I guess is kind of what spurred me on to restart mine.

Which brings me to the purpose of this blog. I really want to use this a place primarily to help collect, “tag and bag” the research I am doing for my dissertation. I want it to be a place where I can put my thoughts and Ideas about what I and reading, and as a place online to link to and collect the bits and pieces of research that I sift out of the internet.