Meme Map

In designing a digital research tool, I wanted to somehow design a system for measuring the conviction of one's beliefs. This would be valuable for my project, but also prove to stump me. I couldn't think of a reasonable way to do "measure" beliefs, so I figured the next best thing would be a way to organize everything (or at least any popular ones) that is believed by groups of people. One of my inspirations for this concept was the website www.relgioustolerance.org. They do their best to create a database of religion. They've created an interesting place to surf and learn in the giest of relgious harmony.

Religious Tolerance's website isn't exactly what I had in mind though, I was something beyond just religious beliefs, but all memes maped the way those clever geneticists figured out the human genome. A database the size of imdb, or better yet wikipedia. Of course it would be a wiki! Then people could add beliefs they share, or encounter. Of course the wiki would have to be edited as judiciously as wikipedia to prevent, as one of my irreverant undergraduate prank postings was labeled by a moderator, "patent non-sense." Ok so what I envision is a comprehensive wiki, that is (unlike wikipedia) limited to memes. The design inovation would be the map.

Like wikipedia, my meme map would be searchable, for ease of opperation, but unlike wikipedia, the site wouldn't be organized in alaphabetical lists (if it were, again, it would be an afterthought to increase ease of use). No my meme map would be a linked series of ideas, that would be taged to link to other ideas that perhaps inspired or were inspired by the idea you first found on the map. For example, say I looked up evangelism, which certaintly is a meme. You would come to a page that might look somewhat like a wikipedia post, but with much more emphasis on user testimonials and ideas, than origins and facts (although those aren't without their importance to the evolution of memes). Up in the corner of each meme page there would be a button a link that would say MapIt! When pressed it would link you to evangelisms place on the meme map (also user/moderator edited). I envision the meme map looking something like an idea map that like writers groups use to brainstorm: here is a link to a model. I would want the meme map to be less scribbly instead to have a key and different fonts and colors to signify different classes of memes (the way a cartographer does on a geographical map).

Bigger memes would be more pervasive, and generally have smaller sub-memes comming off. Christianity would be a huge sphere on the meme map, with it's different sects and sub-sects comming off. Different idea's that have developed from Christianity would be linked off of the appropriate meme bubble, and perhaps be linked to another huge concept that helped develop it. For example, temperance would be linked off of puritanical sects of Christianity, and on the other side of the bubble, temperance would link to Islamic law, or healthy living etc... The reason it would have to be a wiki, is that memes are so hard to pin down in such a way, the only chance a map like this has, is regular contributions from those "infected." Any time a change was made to the map, a facebook like story would be added to a blog seen by moderators it might say "user samhag has established a link between animism and paganism."

The idea behind the meme map is to create a different way of exploring belief, one that attempts to use a "flow." The map would be good for preserving meme theory (which of course has it's own spot on the map somewhere between evolutionary genetics and enlightenment philosophy. The most difficult disiction to draw, might be where to seperate a meme from something more, something that is empirically established, for example the concept of temperature is a meme as far certain things that are theorized about it it (degrees), but it in itself is perceived. So there could be small meme pages that distinguish between Kelvin, Centigrade etc... but one for temperature itself wouldn't be necessary because everyone recognizes that there are varying degrees of heat in one place and time.

Hopefully this makes sence, it's an abstract idea, but memes themselves are an abstraction. My meme map is nothing more than a different way to organize knowledge. It's main revolution could be to put ideas in their place, rather than as something as truthfull as an encyclopedia page.