[ExI] DARPA, Memes, Astroturf

[Keith Henson]

Memes and memetics were commonly discussed in the early days of this list.

Couple of amusing things along that line happened recently

The magazine for my professional organization, the IEEE Spectrum ran
an article that included this:

"For our purposes here, the meme meme has spawned a rather impressive
lexicon of terms, many of which come from the field of memetics, the
study of memes."

And

"If the meme causes self-destructive behavior in the host—as, for
example, a meme about martyrdom might—the host is called a memoid, by
analogy with android."

"A grassroots meme begins with, and is for the most part propagated
by, ordinary users rather than, say, a corporation. If some big-time
marketer fakes a grassroots meme, then you have an astroturf meme. A
similar idea is the forced meme, which is someone's deliberate (and
usually unsuccessful) attempt to create a meme."

http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/the-selfish-meme

What's amusing about this is that the article author missed the
connection to the IEEE.  I was a senior member of the IEEE running a
microprocessor based industrial controls company when I coined
memeoids after a lot of consultation with my wife, Arel Lucas. (Arel
has what seems to be first published credit for suggesting the term
"memetics" in correspondence to Douglas Hafstadter who published her
letter in Metamagical Themas.)

The above is just amusing, the second may be more serious

DARPA released this (I just heard about it)

Broad Agency Announcement
Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC)
DARPA‐BAA‐11‐64
July 14, 2011

snip

Total Funding Available for Award: The SMISC research effort under
this solicitation is estimated at $42M of 6.1 funding over a period of
approximately three years.

http://www.odwyerpr.com/site_images/072011darpa-sm.pdf

Near as I can tell, the grant money is not restricted to the US.

"Foreign Participation: Non‐U.S. organizations and/or individuals may
participate to the extent that such participants comply with any
necessary nondisclosure agreements, security regulations, export
control laws, and other governing statutes applicable under the
circumstances."

I heard recently that this announcement had been in the works for 6 years.

Given the events of the last few years, it's easy to see why DARPA is
trying to figure out if the origin and spread of memes is either
predictable or can be influenced.

I have reason to believe that studies making an attempt to account for
the spread of memes and related issues in an evolutionary psychology
context would be favorably considered.

Keith