Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Evolution of Facebook's 25 Things
Here's an interesting article from Slate on the evolution of Facebook's "25 Things." The connection is made with infectious diseases, but one might also see it from a Luhmannian perspective as a system being destabilized and then self-stabilizing. Which is only to say that these two models are related.
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A very timely article, since today (February 12th) is Darwin's 200th birthday. Incidentally, I would highly recommend Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene (which is mentioned early on in the article)--it essentially started the memetics movement, which provides a useful Darwinian framework for understanding the evolution of culture, media, etc.
ReplyDeleteI find it remarkable that Darwin's theory can be used not only to understand the origin of every living thing on earth, but also (potentially) the origins of things as diverse as ideas, cultural practices, and universes. It's no wonder that E.O. Wilson and James Watson agreed (during an interview with Charlie Rose) that Darwin is "the greatest man that ever lived."