Meme Theory

Meme Theory

The "Meme Theory" is set of concepts to understand, predict and control how memes travel through an organization or network. The graphs here are a product of this theory. Keywords are a proxy for a meme and measuring the rate-of-change of keyword frequency in a datasource like the Internet is predictive. For instance, if the keyphrase "Adobe Flex" has an increasing rate-of-change, its propagation across the Internet is increasing, which implies a growing demand for that technology. For a deeper understanding of meme manipulation, the Schramm Communication Model is the basis of Meme Theory.

Here is the flea design pattern for memetic manipulation, empirically tested on this website.
Here is the venturi design pattern for memetic manipulation.
Here is a more complicated design pattern for manipulation that I've tested empirically.

Assumptions

    ♥ A human being has finite capacity (bandwidth) to accept or send information.

    ♥; The sum of bandwidth for all people is finite

    ♥ Bandwidth is composed of many channels, slices of bandwidth

    ♥ Each channel is a proxy for a meme.

    ♥ Channel width is roughly stable over time, all other things being equal

    ♥ This bandwidth has quality of service and allocates bandwidth to escalated memes as necessary.

    ♥ Long-term competition for finite bandwidth creates hardy memes, resistant to displacement.

Measurements

Bandwidth allocation and memetic resistance can be determined through empirical time-series measurements.
Define a set of quantitative measurements:

     Strength of correlation between stock prices and word counts.

     Impedance - the speed of propagation of a meme.

     Sentiment - how a meme affects the population.

     Diffraction - how well a meme spawns derivative memes.

Correlation

Correlation of stock prices to Dejanews word counts over a ten-year period.

Impedance

Latency and magnitude are components of cultural impedance. Latency shows how quickly a meme is absorbed by a culture. These examples show that Pope's death is quickly accepted but SARS virus is resisted -

Sentiment

Run two time-series queries such as "company name + cool" and "company name + evil", and two graphs are produced, one of mostly positive comments, the second is mostly negative comments.

The difference of the two graphs, a sentiment map, describes net popular sentiment about the subject over time.

Diffraction

As a new meme appears, it absorbs bandwidth from existing memes. If it spawns new memes, the network allocates even more bandwidth to those and there is a measurable diffraction. Diffraction is directly proportional to cultural acceptance. Conversely, if a meme encounters rejection, it sinks like a stone into an icy, black pool of water, barely raising a ripple. We can measure diffraction by comparing two time-series queries. The first graph is new meme, i.e. "Pope + Death" while the second graph shows the existing meme "Pope", minus the elements of the first series. The second series shows us diffraction ( new "non-Death" Pope-related memes ) such as:

The new pope should be Cardinal Jones
Do you remember the pope's last speech?
This pope was an effective leader

High diffraction shows the new meme triggered re-direction of bandwidth to an associated child meme. Diffraction is the mechanism behind Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine theory.

By contrast, the SARS meme used no new bandwidth but drew from the existing bandwidth allocated to "VIRUS". Although SARS used bandwidth, the graph for "VIRUS" remains almost constant.

( Mar 26 2009, 04:27:03 PM EST ) Permalink

Reflections On Reflective Schramm Model

Implications

The Reflective Schramm model floated around in my mind for months before I drew it; I wanted a model which reflected (yuk yuk) my own thought process and explains the Information Age, centralized structure and corruption of trusted organizations such as the financial firms and American culture.

The Schramm model uses generic context but in reality, context is most likely a hierarchical structure of subclassed contexts which interconnect by current goal & audience.

The recursive, reflective nature implies that memes have different propagation behavior than biological viruses; a more holistic model of intertwined memes which modify the context which they strives to infect. Unlike viruses, meme complexes can work in concert to alter the host.

The iterative nature of interrogation & reply means that the form of the interrogation can be designed - broad, simple interrogation versus narrow, detailed interrogation. The interrogation itself is bounded within the interrogator's knowledgebase. That's a limitation. Theres a limitation on the intersection of both contexts, too.

I'm happy with the new model, it's given me several insights, the most significant being clear defintion of differences between memes & viruses.

( Mar 26 2009, 09:14:46 AM EST ) Permalink

Boise Foothills

Ten mile hike through the Boise foothills.
We climbed from 3000ft to 4200ft, almost to the tree line.

Financial bubbles are a function of hubris, materialism, myopia. I doubt if they could sprout in a contemplative culture, much less grow to such size that they bring down the existing order. Treasuries are still up but not for long, I think. Debt issuance is massive and demand has dried up, which means printing and inflation. Once inflation is running 10%, 15%, 20% per year, treasuries should collapse dramatically. Why hold a zero return asset that's losing 20% per year? Interest rates should skyrocket and funding disappear for further gov't deficits.

( Mar 23 2009, 02:26:51 AM EST ) Permalink

Reflective Schramm Model

1) "Noise" is an all-purpose placeholder for miscommunication in the traditional Schramm model. The Reflective Schramm model is more detailed description of miscommunication & context. A person's context knows nothing of external contexts, only the internal models it develops of externalities. Miscommunication is a mismatch between the model and the external context it models.

2) Internal models are developed over time through sets of send/receive messages. Miscommunication occurs from improper interpretation of received messages, delay of receive messages, initial development of a context model or a poor methodology of send/receive messages used to develop the model.

3) In the Recursive Schramm model a person's context contains models of itself which are derived from other people. Jack builds a context model of Jill. But Jill's context model contains its own model of Jack. An accurate model would include Jill's model of himself.

Implications: How we derive a context model is vital. Relationship determines appropriate exchange. A set of exchanges which are narrow and repetitive will produce a limited context model. If we know that future exchanges are equally narrow and repetitive, then the model might be acceptable. But more likely, the methodology of exchange is flawed and produces a flawed context model, which generates continuous miscommunication.

I'll repeat that. How we interrogate and interpret determines the accuracy of future communication. How we ask questions and interpret answers builds a foundation.

( Mar 22 2009, 03:47:24 AM EST ) Permalink

The Economy & What's Really Happening

Debt is a promise. Promises require time to fulfill. Your time is finite so the number of promises which you can fulfill is finite. However, the number of promises you can make is infinite.

Imagine your calendar schedule. You book a meeting for 9am on March, 25, 2008. You book another meeting at 3pm, etc, etc. Now imagine that your calendar is completely full for the next fifteen years but somebody wants a meeting. You double-book a meeting and at some point, bump the lower priority meeting to another time. But wait. All time is booked so now you're double-booking and bumping again.

Your calendar is saturated but you've kept double-booking and hoping for the best.

That's part of what's happening. There are many promises made, some are bad, some are not but it's hard to know which is which. In the real economy, when a promise goes bad, something disappears. The other part of what's happening is that productive capacity to fulfill a promise is shutting down.

In other words, now you've permanently lost a time slot in your calendar. BOOM! Tuesday morning at 9am disappears for the next five years. BOOM! Friday at 3pm disappears for the next 45 weeks. All those meetings have to be rebooked, creating double, triple and quadruple bookings.

More and more debt is being added to try and insure the value of previous bad debt.

So.
How do you think this ends?

( Mar 21 2009, 11:00:02 AM EST ) Permalink

Geithner - Pure Looting

Geithner wants "private investors" to put up 3% and government kick in the remaining 97% to buy toxic assets. And no doubt these "private investors" are Geithner's banker buddies. This is simply a repeat of Paulson's looting under Bush.

Change you can count on.

Greenspan says banks need another $750 billion

( Mar 21 2009, 10:15:48 AM EST ) Permalink

Bond Blowout Redux

My commentary from Oct, 2008

"the percentage bet is that we've entered an unsalvageable situation, although that may not be clear for several more months"

So here we are, six months later, with another $1 trillion bailout and venturing into the realm of pure printing. The Russians are bolstering their gold reserves, the Chinese have stopped purchasing U.S. treasuries and both seek to dethrone the dollar, in which case Americans will pay much higher prices for oil and imported goods.

This was all predictable with some knowledge of history. I, a lowly computer geek, predicted a great deal of it over THIRTY months ago.

"It's hard to imagine a future where the dollar retains any value, which means that the current trend towards international outsourcing will draw to a close soon. Most Americans also don't realize that the major international blocs have been planning to abandon the US dollar as an international currency for several years"

Why were the SuperGeniuses at the Federal Reserve and Treasury (who are PAID to understand all this) unable to foresee any of it?

Answer that question and you'll understand what is happening.

( Mar 20 2009, 05:33:10 AM EST ) Permalink

Dollar Collapse

The U.S. dollar treads the same path as every other paper currency. Today's 3.5% collapse is historic. As I've said before, U.S. paper is not safe, although millions still believe that it is. The debt facing the United States government is already beyond levels which sank all other countries. Very high odds of the same outcome here.

( Mar 18 2009, 11:49:40 PM EST ) Permalink

A Night In Meridian

Nampa bars close at 1:00am so I finish my game at 12:57pm and head east to Meridian to find another forty minutes of pool. I spy two tables in a new gaudy franchise bar. The first is surrounded by a gaggle of young, fat girls so I ignore them and plunk my quarters into the other. But they're too drunk or too large and keep intruding into my space.

They're not attractive or rich, just sexual Liabilities seeking a victim to father their children. I tire of them and my body language shows it. The game passes before they finally grasp my "no sale" message and move on, confused by my stoic silence. I play a couple more games in peace and then head over to Shari's and order a horrid banana split. How the hell can you ruin a banana split? But something is wrong. Overripe bananas? Rancid whipped cream? I push it away half eaten.

I think about the past five years, how work has become progressively worse, although 2006 and 2008 were better than 2007, the past year with Janet was almost always awesome and I finally won my divorce in December. Why did Dominique restart Our Game on Valentine's Day? Is it an incredible coincidence? What does she want? Closure? Revenge? Curiosity?

The giggling gaggle of fat girls enter and sit down.
They glance over.
I wonder why I'm not dead yet.
I pay the bill and leave.

( Mar 18 2009, 02:54:49 AM EST ) Permalink

Hostile Interview

I average about two interviews per month and yesterday's interviewer was young and defensive. Hostility was restrained in his tone, reminiscent of my SpeakEasy interview in 2007 and within fifteen minutes he abruptly declared the interview over. Today I received the feedback about "better candidates" although I've been coding for almost twenty years. I suspect he was a Millennial or Gen-X-er harboring a grudge against Baby Boomers for his woes, as I've seen this frequently in the past year.

The recruiter wanted to complain to upper management but I've had enough of hostile environments. I try to avoid them. Last month I added my my high school graduation date (1976) to my resume to (hopefully) circumvent age-biased interviews before they occur.

I hope for success in an honest environment but it recedes further each year. In a few weeks I'll set a new all-time record for unemployment. My previous high of six months in 2006 is still too recent. I was hoping to get back with Janet in Seattle but the job market is mostly East coast and I'm tired of fighting what the United States has become.

So many lies.
I don't see how the U.S. ever recovers.

( Mar 17 2009, 11:26:41 PM EST ) Permalink

Vegas Again

Las Vegas stocks (MGM, LVS, WYNNE) formed a false bottom in Dec, 2008 and imploded again in the past ninety days. The losses are tremendous and, as I noted in Oct, 2008, are strong indicator of impending bankruptcy.

( Mar 16 2009, 09:51:46 AM EST ) Permalink

Going Galt? Going Nowhere!

Lately there's been much sturm und drang about the "John Galt uprising" so I did a check of the memes.

Yes, there's a significant uptick in "John Galt" in Blogpulse.com but it's an uptick from a small # of sites (see comparison of "Sarah Palin vs John Galt"). A broader measure from Google Trends shows a smaller uptick, smaller than previous upticks over the past few years. The "John Galt" meme needs to grow another 200-300% to reach the current buzz level of "Sarah Palin" or "Al Gore". If that happens, then I'll take it seriously.

I believe the "John Galt" meme is an internet-based advertising campaign waged by a small number of Ayn Rand advocates because they see the current environment as susceptible to their beliefs. It's not a broad-based movement and I don't expect it to become one. This is a recurring phenomenon with small cult groups and I've seen this particular one before (the large spike in early 2005). Also, note the rise in official news stories for "John Galt" but not in google user queries. Hype.

( Mar 14 2009, 07:36:59 PM EST ) Permalink

Calm Before The Storm

"Things Fall Apart"

According to Mish, California is $16 billion in debt thirty days after passing their "balanced budget".

Doug Casey analysis:

"I am firmly in the camp that believes that Washington is now trapped in a massive inflation of government obligations... The worst case scenario unfolds when our creditors and the marketplace turn against these government obligations"

iTulip analysis:

"US is vulnerable to a balance of payments crisis... we are ready to say that these [triggering events] may occur within the next three quarters:"

In other words, our paper may soon no longer be accepted.

( Mar 14 2009, 07:52:32 AM EST ) Permalink

Shazam

James Martin predicted in 2000 that the Internet would spawn "alien intelligences" radically different from human intelligence and incomparably more powerful in focused domains. This week I experienced my first alien intelligence. Shazam is a music discovery engine which identifies music after listening to a short sample.

I downloaded Shazam to my iPhone and tested it in a local Starbucks. Starbucks's background music is often inaudible and I've had trouble hearing enough lyrics for a Google search. Shazam correctly identified "Picaresque" by The Decemberists in my first test, even though I could only recognize one or two lyric words. I was surprised it worked at all, given the noise level. The failure rate was higher in subsequent tests but it's an amazing product which does something that no human can duplicate.

The possibilities are enormous. Imagine an iPhone application that can do better medical diagnosis than any doctor on Earth.

Shazam meme -

( Mar 14 2009, 04:03:35 AM EST ) Permalink

8 Ball

Woman probably always sucked but sometimes I'm uncommonly dense.
Jobs often suck now, too.

What's left?
Pool!

On Tuesday, I ran the table twice out of 25 games, once on a 9-footer. I've only ran the table once before in the past 2 1/2 years and that was last month. And I came close two other times, downing 7 and 6 balls.

This week I found three different bars with a total of SEVEN hours of free pool per day, seven days a week

( Mar 13 2009, 10:32:04 PM EST ) Permalink