I don’t really remember how I got there, but I ended up at memepool, the brainchild of del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter and Jeff Smith. Posted on January 5th, 2006, was an entry which read:

The popularity of 50 Cent has given rise to spin-offs that range from Jewish Hip-Hop to 80s Pop mixups.

Hey, I’m always on the look out for more quality Jewish Hip Hop, so I followed the link to the website of Aviad Cohen, aka 50 Shekel (the shekel is the standard of currency in Israel, hence the connection to 50 Cent). His splash page looked earnestly Jewish, almost too much so. Clicking on the enter site link, it became quite obvious that Aviad-Cohen-50-Shekel is a Jew for Jesus. I don’t really want to get into a discussion on Jewish identity, and I have a fairly liberal perspective, but I have a distrust of proselytizing ministers who claim to have a direct mandate from God (and, by the way, ask for prayers and money to support his mission and to buy, among other things, a video iPod).

It seems very likely that pjammer didn’t even follow the “enter site” link. The photo of Aviad in a “Jesus/King of Kings” graphic tee or the link to Jesus-Is-Savior (”get schooled quick”) would have sent up a few red flags to even the most unknowledgeable goy.

To get on track with the underlying moral (as looking back at my writing, many of my posts have at least one), it seems that memepool is concerned with getting “memes” out, linking out to, being linked to. This is what I’d attribute to the Google Effect — with its relevence-based search ranking, using measures of link and traffic intensity — and it has had a measurable influence on the blogosphere (check out Francine’s 4 months of blogging… for a very nicely written and honest retrospective of blogging as a practice tightly intertwined with the ego).

What are memes, these things with which memepool is so concerned? A meme is defined by Wiktionary as, “a unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.” I had mentioned memes earlier in passing, without really delving much deeper. Jason Godesky of the Anthropik Network describes memetics with an example that just makes sense:

The term was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1978 classic, The Selfish Gene, where Dawkins ended with a discussion of humanity’s ability to adapt culturally. Cultural adaptation works many times faster than biological adaptation; a man can sew a sweater in far less time than it will take natural selection to make his great-great-grandchildren hairier. This cultural adaptation has given humanity an adaptiveness and evolutionary fitness rivaled in the animal kingdom only by cockroaches.

So we pass on memes because culture is adaptable in a more efficient and far-flung manner than biology (unless you’re a fruitfly). Most of the time, these memes are passed either laterally or down the generations tacitly through modeling. Unless one stops and thinks about it, the average person really doesn’t have a cogent reason for wearing sweaters in the winter (at least, we in New England wear sweaters in the winter — for now). Other memes are spread intentionally and explicitly, like those on memepool. While I have no evidence to back this up, it seems that the more explicit the meme in a time of relative stability, i.e., when adaptation doesn’t need to occur, the less likely the meme has to do with survival. Following this thought through, the explicit transmission of “junk memes” leads to an apparent trivialization of cultural adaptation.

If we consider the analogue of junk memes in DNA, junk genes mean that scientists don’t know what they do. The same could be said, really, for these junk memes.

For 2006’s World Question Center, The Edge posed, “What is your dangerous idea?” This question elicited some interesting responses, but the two I was drawn to the most were listed on pages 7 and 8. Harvard’s Daniel Gilbert wrote:

Dangerous does not mean exciting or bold. It means likely to cause great harm. The most dangerous idea is the only dangerous idea: The idea that ideas can be dangerous.

Similarly, physicist and computer scientist W. Daniel Hillis wrote,

I don’t share my most dangerous ideas. Ideas are the most powerful forces that we can unleash upon the world, and they should not be let loose without careful consideration of their consequences. Some ideas are dangerous because they are false, like an idea that one race of humans is more worthy that another, or that one religion has monopoly on the truth. False ideas like these spread like wildfire, and have caused immeasurable harm. They still do. Such false ideas should obviously not be spread or encouraged, but there are also plenty of trues idea that should not be spread: ideas about how to cause terror and pain and chaos, ideas of how to better convince people of things that are not true.

Incompletely and inaccurately labeling 50 Shekel as Jewish — rather than as a Jew for Jesus — probably isn’t going to start a war, cause widespread suffering, or the like; however, a seemingly innocuous meme has the potential to be dangerous in some yet unknown way. The danger will probably only be apparent in retrospect. So, in conclusion, isn’t it important to be mindful of the information and memes we explicitly pass on, and aware of its’ potential to bring about good as well as its’ potential to be dangerous?

If we aren’t mindful of this binary potentiality as memetic receivers and transmitters, as learners and teachers, someone else probably already is, and is willing to use this awareness not for the survival of the many, but for the benefit of the few.

• Joanna Weiss predicts that 2005 will mark the beginning of the end of serendipity.
• George Siemens is grappling with the nature of meaning making, learning, and subjectivity.
• Doug of Borderland is searching for a “broadened conceptualization of curriculum.”
• Lisa Lynch and Bob Stein of the Institute for the Future of the Book consider Wikipedia’s potential commercial turn, whether out of subversive necessity or categorical design.
• Meta of metas, Ulises Ali Mejias reports on using social software to teach about social software.
• Jason Godesky meditates on the true (truer?) meanings and implications of memetics.
• Can an ultimate theory of Lost really be found, and will the boys from South Park, Colorado, ever grow up?

Happy New Year, and I hope 2006 brings a sense of satisfaction in the search, whatever you are looking for, to everyone.

Just one caveat: Everything In Moderation. Baby Einstein on VHS or DVD is self-contained and limited, and is made specifically for toddlers. I would never let him watch CSI, nor do I put the tape on more than once a day (most days, I don’t put it on for him at all). The other option is that I let him play with toilet paper.

Well, the tape is over, so I think I’m going to go play catch with him now. Yeah, he plays catch.

You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.

Yeah, I’d buy that.

Not to say that I don’t need to watch myself on this account, and not to fall into the trap I have laid down for myself, I do believe that there is a general trend that bears consideration. We are living in the information age; there is, as Thomas Hylland Eriksen points out in Tyranny of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age, a lack of freedom from information. As such, Eriksen warns that we tend to re-live the Law of Diminishing Returns over and over again as we are bombarded with information.

The Law of Diminishing Returns can be explained in this way (and I am adapting my explanation from Erksen’s): Suppose you are thirsty. You go into a store and buy a bottle of juice. This juice quenches your thirst and tastes absolutely delicious. You buy a second bottle, and while it tastes good, it doesn’t feel quite as refreshing as the first. As you buy up and drink all the bottles of juice in the store, drinking loses all value and meaning.

As we are bombarded with information from the Internet (in whatever particular flavor you prefer — blogs, regular pages, online newspapers, rss feeds), television, and radio (and as students learn in a classroom setting, they are expected to absorb more and more information), any particular piece of information gets lost in the noise as it becomes just another item. As a result, the author must clamor to grab your attention and make it noticed. Often, authors (I) do it without realizing it.

As we think about learning in the Information Age, it is as important to encourage critical and mindful authorship as it is to encourage critical readership.

If it’s to last, then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be… smelly.
- Rupert Giles, “I Robot… You Jane,” Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I’ve always had a soft spot for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As I recently mentioned to someone, if Buffy’s not about human nature, I don’t know what is. I further truly believe that we in the field of education can learn much from this (syndicated) fantastical examination of the psyche.

Through the postings, I will be exploring learning and the processes of education. I tend to be rather reflective and philosophical, while keeping a grip on reality — a delicate dance that I feel is worth undertaking. I further believe, like Giles, that the “getting of knowledge,” the learning process, should be “smelly.” The comfort zones of learners should be challenged a bit, and the process should be fueled by dialogue — which is open by nature — and not necessarily by content — which tends to be closed. That is not to say, of course, that content, or rather a common framework for discussion, is not important.

And with this, I begin.