QueeneMUSE@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 9/30/1999 3:00:12 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
> rowen@technologist.com writes:
>
> <<
> And, clinically speaking, "technophilia" is "an ego-defense erected to
> maintain the repression of abstract thought." >>
>
> what is that an infected meme?
Assuming you refer to "technophilia", my neologism implied a pathological attraction to, or obsession with, an object (c.f. necrophilia) -- in this case a neurotic absorption in technology or the artifacts of sensation (with apologies to the American Psychiatric Association).
Being quite new to the Transhumanist Ideology and Ethos, I can only recall that the term "meme" was introduced by the Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins to denote the cultural equivalent of genes; ideas and collective phenomena took on a life of their own within society and, along with genes, affected the progress of human evolution. I'm sure this is a very inadequate or erroneous rendering, but I suppose "memes", like genes, are subject to the vagaries of mutation and could become grotesque psychological equivalents of defective genetic material.
Bob