From: Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Dec 17 1996 - 05:06:13 MST
Well, net.memes like this have so far not been very harmful; they have
just wasted some bandwidth and memetic space and possibly fooled some
people in scams. Nothing out of the ordinary, really.
What I worry about is the danger of a truly harmful net.meme, say the
violent millennial meme combined with the infectiousness of the Good Times
Virus. The net is a huge meme-pool with a very high rate of replication
and many potential hosts, but fortunately the mutation frequency is low
(due to the ease of copying information digitally), so it provides an
ideal environment for flash-memes that spread quickly. I do not know how
likely this kind of memetic danger is, but we should be aware of it.
As a principle, I do not replicate *any* obvious or common net.meme in
email (my webpages contain a few www.memes, though).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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