From: Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Date: Fri Oct 01 1999 - 00:19:08 MDT
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.
I am not a biologist, so I am not aware of anything that could "infect"
a meme, although for all I know they could be vulnerable to a virtual
neurological virus and become neuropathic, or, for that matter, exhibit
unseemly virtual warts or other unwanted excrescences.
Bob
=======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
=======================
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