[NetBehaviour] Every Old Meme Is New Again.

[marc]

Every Old Meme Is New Again.

By Robert Lemos (Wired.com)

It's the idea that just won't die: A scientific experiment to track the 
viral spread of a "meme" -- a contagious quantum of thought -- has 
become so popular that its creator has had trouble tracking it.

The experiment being conducted by comparative literature graduate 
student Scott Eric Kaufman was intended to measure how quickly a simple 
idea would jump between blogs covering different academic disciplines.

"Scholars, journalists and bloggers write uncritically about the 
potential of blogs to spread information quickly and accurately," 
Kaufman said in an e-mail interview. "I want to learn how 
(cross-discipline) communities are created, and I figured a meme of this 
sort of limited interest ... would be one way to track it."

Evolutionist and author Richard Dawkins popularized the concept of 
memes. In the 1990s, Electronic Frontier Foundation pioneer Mike Godwin 
conducted a famous experiment in counter-meme seeding with his Law of 
Nazi Analogies aimed at reducing Nazi comparisons in online discourse.

more...
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72207-0.html?tw=wn_culture_6