Horizontal Meme transfer.

Bit of a thought in progress, this post. Also a tribute to Darwin, who was born 200 years ago today.

I read this article about horizontal gene transfer, and it got me thinking about how this might apply to creative thinking and ideas generation. The article reveals that the tree of life isn't really a tree, but a bit of tangled old mess, as genes keep getting transplanted from one species to another by viruses and hybridisation and the like. Apparently, there's a bit of snake DNA in the cow genome. The other really fascinating thing in this article is the section about species with larval stages, like caterpillars/butterflies. Some researchers think that this is the result of the amalgamation of the genomes of two different species into one functioning genome. The idea is that the genomes are expressed sequentially, with one organism's original life-code doing the business first, with a metamorphosis leading to the second species DNA taking over to finish the job off. This seems quite reasonable. If an alien landed on earth and looked at a caterpillar and a butterfly, they would assume they were different species. If you find all of this hard to swallow, read the bit about the starfish.

Anyway, if memes are idea genes, then what if we embrace horizontal transfer, hybridisation and dual genomes to enrich the evolution of strong ideas? If the right two jokes got stuck together, would they become one dominant joke? Would we eventually forget that it ever existed as two separate jokes? If we took other persistent memes and swapped chunks of them, would new, more successful memes emerge? How might this process work in a shorter time frame, like the course of an ideas generation workshop or student project? How might it apply to social software? Can I think of a way of using Twitter to test this hypothesis?

The Butterfly Effect.

I've blogged about 'abductive reasoning' a couple of times before. This is a sort of action focussed speculative analysis, reasoning what might be, and is a common trait in designers.

After group heckling the atrocious film 'The Butterfly Effect' during the Emerge event in York last week, my mind has been full of time travel ideas, and I started wondering how abductive reasoning might be applied at the end of a research project, in a giant 'What if?' exercise. At the start of Open Habitat, I spent a lot of time applying abductive reasoning to the construction of project scenarios. Now that we have the benefit of experience behind us, what might we have done differently, and how catastrophically good or bad might that have been for the project? If we travel back in time to key points in the Open Habitat project, and imagine that we had made a different choice, where might we be now?

False Dichotomy

I love the potential for serendipitous moment when in public. As an avid fan of public transport I enjoy the excitement, and the dangers, and the opportunities for mental stimulation that mixing with all sort of strangers brings. Some of the best conversations I have ever had have been with nutters who happened to sit next to me on the train. I also recognise the value of closed communities, like a University degree course. When I'm at Uni, I have conversations with people that I automatically have something in common with. I know who they are, and they know who I am.

I love the potential for serendipitous moment when in Second Life. As an avid fan of random double clicking on the mainland map, I enjoy the excitement, and the dangers, and the opportunities for mental stimulation that mixing with all sort of strangers brings. Some of the best conversations I have ever had have been with nutters who happened to stand next to me on a sim. I also recognise the value of closed communities, like a University degree course's private OpenSim grid. If I had a Uni MUVE, I could have conversations with people that I automatically have something in common with. I would also know who they were, and they would know who I am.

It would be pretty sad if my students and I stayed inside Uni all the time, but it would be pretty pointless having a degree course if we spent all our time outside. Private is good. Public is good. Similarly, the public space of Second Life provides amazing opportunities for deep learning through role-play and engagement with worldwide communities, but a private OpenSim grid would give all of our students a safe space to inhabit. Authentic identities would enable a blending of the virtual and the real, and once hooked, the students would possess the necessary skills and confidence to stride out into Second Life as whoever they choose to be.