Footnotes

Seppukoo » About

As viral marketing strategies have been exploited by corporate media to make profit connecting people all over the world, Seppukoo playfully attempts to subvert this mechanism disconnecting people from each other and transforming the individual suicide experience into an exciting”social” experience.With Seppukoo in fact it’s not important how many friends you have, but how much [...]

Smart swarms: The power of self-organization – Peter Miller

As social media and technologies continue to disseminate and evolve, making it easier for everyone to connect with everyone else, to communicate and collaborate in ways we’ve only started to anticipate, swarm intelligence may become the norm rather than the exception. As that happens, the best leader may find themselves turning for advice to the [...]

Social networks and the connective tissue of a Big Society :: Blog :: Headshift

Although the reflex still exists to evoke fear of these positions in political campaigning, neither pro- nor anti-state positions are meaningful in themselves. We have seen the devastating social problems that resulted from the idea that there is no such thing as society, under Thatcher, and under Blair and Brown we have learned that no [...]

Cognitive Surplus – Use Social Connectivity to Change the World

Harnessing the power of the collective crowdsourcing for social change is a thread woven throughout Cognitive Surplus, and its viability requires two of Shirky’s assertions to be accurate. First, that our default state as a species is to create and share and collaborate, and we are just now moving back toward normalcy, aided by the [...]

Regarding Egregores…

…the egregore is not in total control… as the action of the social or corporate body is determined through the action of its parts, the individuals. These are intelligences that are emergent properties of the complex system that compose their bodies, and the individual people within these social or corporate bodies are not in control [...]

How to Play a Feminist by Shira Chess

While First Wave Feminism focused on suffrage, and Second Wave Feminism focused on getting women ahead in the workplace, many of the more recent fractured feminist movements have continued to ignore the importance of play and leisure in everyday lives. This all-work-and-no-play focus has ricocheted to future feminisms: none have successfully reclaimed leisure and play. [...]

Facebook: friend or foe? | Media | The Guardian

It’s the fast-growing social network and attracts far less attention than its far smaller rivals such as Twitter. And it is the users, not the site, who grab chunks of content to link to. via Facebook: friend or foe? | Media | The Guardian.

Countering Viral Marketing By Tig Tillinghast

The killing of Americans through anthrax letters isn’t itself a useful end to the terrorists. Instead, the terrorists perceive that the communication of horror — not disease — through the country, along with the polarization of overseas opinion accomplished through viral marketing, will eventually lead to the adoption of their policy goals. To counter propaganda [...]

Wanted: people who have used an online persona for self-transformation | Technoccult

Have you used an online persona to accomplish self-transformation? I’m doing research for my hypersigil project currently thinking it will take the form of a free e-book, and then be extended into something else from there, and I’m looking for personal stories from people who have attempted to use online personas to make changes in [...]

By @mistygirlph – Can You Have Real Friends on Twitter?

She gives 5 tips, here’s the first 3… 1. Don’t follow just for numbers – Twitter is your chance to really get to know real people. The numbers may be worthless if you cannot connect and inspire others. 2. They are not mere avatars – They are human beings that live and breath. Twitter is [...]

Whence Altruism? Via @mefi

A new study suggests that humanity’s sense of fair play and kindness towards strangers is determined by culture, not genetics. Speculation: the finding may be directly related to the rise of religion in human history, as well as more complex economies. via Whence Altruism? | MetaFilter.

Visual Understanding Environment

The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University. The VUE project is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information. via Visual Understanding Environment.

A Whimsical Company: Kayac Inc.

Gambling for salary? The day before receiving the paycheck, each employee is required to roll a dice. A portion of their salary for the month is then multiplied by the value he/she rolls. Travelling office Every year for about 2-3 months, the company rents out an office in places such as Hawaii and Italy and [...]

via @disinfo | memetic engineering #meme

Memetics met with academic opposition from socio-biologists including Edward O. Wilson, and Dawkins himself expressed concern about memetics becoming an empirical science of culture. Dennett and others developed slightly different interpretations of memes from Dawkins, and the academic world has consequently been slow to adopt the new science. Memetic Engineering developed from diverse influences, including [...]

Director of Research at Google and AI genius | MetaFilter

Seeds of AI at Google — how the internet is shaping intelligence and learning and, in turn, the role of human culture in natural selection via Director of Research at Google and AI genius | MetaFilter.

Memes Pose As The Most Effective Tool In Brand Communication

The agent changes by learning something new, the information changes by the knowledge the agent already had. Therefore, a meme reaching an agent, will be transmitted in a changed form. Thus, cultural evolution is Lamarckian: characteristics acquired during the lifetime of the meme’s carrier can be transmitted to later carriers selectively, depending on their fitness. [...]

the reinvention of the telegram #whatistwitter

Twitter / Home

Richard Semon

His ideas of the mneme based on the Greek goddess, Mneme, the muse of memory were developed upon early in the 20th century. The mneme represented the memory of an external-to-internal experience. The resulting “mnemic trace” or “engram” would be revived when an element resembling a component of the original complex of stimuli was encountered. [...]

The rise of self-publishing

Although there is no way of breaking down the types of book being self-published, [Jane] Rowland [editor of The Self Publishing Magazine] estimates that it’s 60 per cent fiction and 40 per cent non-fiction. With the growing number of self-publishers comes a new public respect for self-published authors. So commentators who once derided “vanity published” [...]

What the Hell is Going on Here?

FuckYourBrain is an online and PDF-based fountain of knowledge and delight. The mission? To promote deliberate human evolution, to provide the material for new creations, to encourage neurogenesis, to provide data on epigenetics, to appreciate and adore beauty and power, and to advance the possibility of life extension and immortality, all with a deep sense [...]

Breast cancer awareness goes viral on Facebook . . . with bra color updates

Purple. Polka dot. Grimy white. And even as the bra colors went viral — wildly so — cyber-arguments erupted about what it all meant. Was so openly and brazenly posting something as intimate as one’s bra color an attempt to raise breast cancer awareness? Or was it all just another Facebook time-suck, another “send your [...]

Quaint Media and Today’s Memetic Ecology

I want you to imagine back in the early days of newspapers and magazines how the effect of coupons could be measured. A store owner put a coupon in a local newspaper, and then counted up the coupons that came back into the store – immediately that store owner had an understanding of the impact [...]

Infictive: About

“Infictive is not an adjective (despite what its etymology may lead you to believe) — it is a subspace. It is not limited to the county bearing its namesake, but is instead an encompassing state of ultra-real. It is nothing which you can possess, nor is it a quality which can be attributed to any [...]

Digital Narrative in an Attention Ecology

..using footage taken from multiple devices like phones, digital video cameras, closed-circuit television systems, news footage, and web cams, a storyline can be generated online which has the feel of a real sequence of events. These video elements would then be played back with overlying narrative in an actual filmic release, requiring fans of the [...]

The Telephone Repair Handbook by Mark Pesce

Today, all human communication is threaded, multi-participatory, multimodal, asynchronous, proximally indistinct, ubiquitous, continuous, and entirely pervasive. Given this enormous change in the ground conditions, it seems perfectly sensible that we should rethink the basic instrument of electronic communication. As the most concrete and pervasive manifestation of cyberspace, the mobile telephone establishes new cultural patterns of [...]

Blip Festival 2009

The Blip Festival, now one of the worlds largest and longest running events of its kind, continues to evolve with a greater breadth of international artists, a growing sophistication of styles and creative vocabulary, and a forward-thinking enthusiasm driven home by over two dozen of the worlds best musicians and visualists. If there’s one thing [...]

Weakness is Strength… when you learn from it « Edward E. Wilson

Of course merely having problems isn’t ENOUGH to qualify someone to help you. The next thing they need to have done is LEARNED from it. What have they learned about coping with, or solving the problem that you have? Even someone only slightly ahead of you on the recovery curve can help you. Next, they [...]

Jonathan Mendez’s Blog: Rising Tide of PPC Means SEO is Sinking

With all current fuss about automated content for SEO I've found the recent changes by Google here and here have only greatly diminished the value of SEO for the most valuable keywords those that have transactional value. via Jonathan Mendez’s Blog: Rising Tide of PPC Means SEO is Sinking.

Stephen Toulmin, a Philosopher and Educator, Dies at 87 – Obituary Obit – NYTimes.com

Stephen Toulmin, an influential philosopher who conducted wide-ranging inquiries into ethics, science and moral reasoning and developed a new approach to analyzing arguments known as the Toulmin model of argumentation, died on Dec. 4 in Los Angeles. He was 87. via Stephen Toulmin, a Philosopher and Educator, Dies at 87 – Obituary Obit – NYTimes.com.

Frindle

Frindle ['frindl] n., a writing device, usually a ballpoint pen.[3] It is now a real word; it means pen or writing device in English. via Frindle – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

What an ideal search engine might be like:

Scope: The ideal engine would be able to search every document on the Internet Speed: Results would be available immediately Currency: All the information would be kept completely up-to-date Recall: We could always find every document relevant to our query Precision: There would be no irrelevant documents in our result set Ranking: The most relevant [...]

Social Media Today | Research shows how much we love a blamestorm

According to Science Daily, two academics conducted four different experiements, “and found that publicly blaming others dramatically increases the likelihood that the practice will become viral.”In one example, participants read about California Governor Schwarzenegger blaming special interest groups for the failure of a special election that cost $250. The ones who did so were more [...]

Overdue library books returned half century later – Nation AP – MiamiHerald.com

Camelback High School librarian Georgette Bordine says the two Audubon Society books checked out in 1959 and the money order were sent by someone who wanted to remain anonymous. Bordine says the letter explained that the borrower's family moved to another state and the books were mistakenly packed. The letter said the money order was [...]

Cymatics

Harold Cabezas (haroldcabezas) ‘s status on Thursday, 03-Sep-09 15 … – “Sound Does Have Form…It Can Affect Matter And Cause Form Within Matter.” – Evan Grant on Cymatics-TED Video http://post.ly/3rkN. Attachments. http://haroldcabezas.posterous.com/sound-does-have-formit-can-affect-matter-and … Evan Grant: Making sound visible through cymatics (TED) « Urban … – Evan Grant: Making sound visible through cymatics (TED). This entry [...]

Cymatics Used To Create Dolphin Alphabet | Journal of Cymatics

Using high definition audio recordings of dolphins, the research team, headed by English acoustics engineer and cymatics researcher, John Stuart Reid, and Florida-based dolphin researcher, Jack Kassewitz, has been able to use cymatics to image the imprint that a dolphin sound makes in water. They have used cymatics to create “reproducible patterns that are expected [...]

Imagine Your Reality , Archive » Social media strategy for my website and web presence

Video is an underused resource in social media, but its increasingly going to become relevant as people use it to create information videos, video blogs, or comedic video entries. I’m planning on making more videos, because I know they provide a level of interactivity that people will want more of as time goes on. After [...]

Neuromarketing: What the Human Brain Means to Your Campaign

Neuromarketing companies fall into three broad categories based on technique: fMRI scanning: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanners, weighing in at about 32 tons and costing about $3 million each, measure the level of blood flow to various regions of the brain, showing researchers where the action is. The ability to provide location-based brain mapping is [...]

Pilotlite is now Hukilau

A Hukilau is a way of fishing invented by the ancient Hawaiians. The word comes from Huki, meaning pull, and lau, meaning leaves. A large number of people, usually family and friends, would work together in casting the net from shore and then pulling it back. The net was lined with ki leaves, which would [...]

Hunvalski Vodkalots – a social experiment « Joely Righteous

Never before has it been possible to see such quick paced change across the Google SERP. At this years imedia summit Amnesia have started a social experiment in the form of @Hunvalski. The idea of this experiment is to see the amount of search results that can be generated for the term Hunvalski (a term [...]

67 Social Media Networking Sites And That’s Just To Start! / Domozych Media

How do you know which ones to use? Is there a way to target only the relevant ones? The answer is – well, sorta. This isn’t rocket science, but it is always evolving. Right now there are four ‘meta’ social networking sites that I want to introduce you to – you might think of this [...]

YouTube – The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity

About 10 minutes of it is a minor update (rehash) of An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube, but the rest is new. The gathering may have been the highest concentration of amazingly creative and concerned global citizens I have ever been around. Hallway conversations were different than your typical conversations. Instead of lots of people saying, [...]

Musing about culture and customers and choice: the eBaying of “content” – confused of calcutta

There is an eBaying of content going on, as people repurpose stuff they find in the digital garage and attic that is the Web. Some people will become the new scavengers, looking through the detritus of the web for things to reuse and remix. Some will build the places where they look, the tools they [...]

Online Social Optimization and Lifestream Toolsets – Domozych Media / Wes’ Desk

The experience of self-publishing and distributing this book led to the formulation of an approach to marketing I labeled ‘OSO’ – or ‘Online Social Optimization’ – which encompasses three interrelated fields, online reputation management or ORM, search engine optimization or SEO, and social media optimization or SMO. The principle is simple – each of these [...]

Quaint Media and Today’s Memetic Ecology / Wes’ Desk

If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead (Part One): Media Viruses and Memes By Henry Jenkins

MIT Convergence Culture Consortium: Weblog The re-use, remixing and adaptation of the LOLcat idea instead suggest that the spread and replication of this form of cultural production is not due to the especially compelling nature of the LOLcat idea but the fact it can be used to make meaning. A similar situation can be seen [...]

Special Announcement: Project Bluebird

‘Project Bluebird: Fucking with Reality’, is a quarterly-release periodical commencing production in 2009. Project Bluebird concentrates primarily on the topics of Reality Hacking, Bio-Psionics, Neo-tantra and Modern Mysticism. Each issue of Project Bluebird features a full-color cover, with internal black and white artwork and text. Submissions of Writing and Art are now being accepted for [...]

Footnote 102

Exercise Write out a story, or at least a description, of the idealized version of your life. Write this in third person, seeking to objectively portray who you ideally would like to become. By then creating a storyline around this character, you begin building a model in your mind of how you might become that [...]

Footnote 101

Processual symbolic analysis, or comparative symbology, refers to the study of symbols used within cultural, or more specifically ritual, contexts. See Turner, V. (1974) Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society Return to Page

Footnote 100

Burroughs, William and Odier, Daniel. (1974) The Job Return to Page

Footnote 99

Carroll, P. (1992). Liber Kaos — Your mileage may vary. Return to Page

Footnote 98

Repeating affirmations you simply don’t believe causes resistance each time you repeat them. It’s much more productive to start with affirmations you occasionally find yourself believing to begin with, focusing on moving toward your goal organically, rather than through immediate, catastrophic changes. Return to Page

Footnote 97

An example of another film which uses non-linear narration to good effect is The Usual Suspects. Return to Page

Footnote 96

Jenkins, Henry (2006) Convergence Culture pp 101-103, sidebar. Henry Jenkins’ work can provide an excellent starting point in understanding trends in contemporary media culture. See the suggested reading list in the back of the book for a wealth of follow-up material. Return to Page

Footnote 95

Three Brain-Balancing Exercises: 1. Practice singing or rapping on a particular topic; trying to focus on rhyme, melody, and rhythm. Do not rely on memorized materials. Record yourself so you can go back later and look for unexpected or unintentional utterances. 2. Describe, in present tense, spontaneously arising mental images using concrete detail in all [...]

Footnote 94

A rhizomatic network is one with multiple non-hierarchical entry and exit points. Here’s a particularly compelling visual demonstration: (video) Return to Page

Footnote 93

As previously discussed, Mastermind groups are nodal points for group mind consciousness. The multimind is a breakdown of the structures and protocols of one’s personal consciousness. While we’re not declaring this as a conclusion, we do feel that using the multimind model as a way to evaluate a group mind at least provides a starting [...]

Footnote 92

Ornstein, Robert. (1986) Multimind: The multimind is the non-unified parts and separate processes that run the actual work of mental cognition. An example of this is sub-personalities; elements and triggers that form specific responses that make up an overall personality structure. Return to Page

Footnote 91

Proprioception is the awareness of internal, muscular systems at work. Being aware of the movement of muscles, the heart beating, or one’s lungs working is a proprioceptive awareness. Return to Page

Footnote 90

Hoffer, Eric. (1963) The True Believer and Frank, Thomas. (2005) What’s the Matter with Kansas? bookend nicely the problematic nature of democracy. Return to Page

Footnote 89

“Language for the Kabbalists is always mystical. It ‘reflects the fundamental spiritual nature of the world’. Speech reaches God because it comes from God. This belief is echoed, incidentally, but in a secular way, by the post-structuralist thought of people such as Jacques Derrida whose proclamation of a ‘new thinking’ holds that all knowledge and [...]

Footnote 88

Dilts, R., Grinder, J., Bandler, R., and DeLozier, J., (1980) Neuro-linguistic Programming Vol. 1 Return to Page

Footnote 87

Calhoun, Craig, Ed. (1992) Habermas and the Public Sphere pp 109-142: Nancy Frazer’s “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy” provides an excellent starting point in understanding the function of the subaltern. Return to Page

Footnote 86

Both public and counter-public spheres of discourse are social spaces, even subaltern groups have their own internal networks that influence the larger social spheres. That which cannot be referenced in public discourse will find its expression elsewhere in the social spaces of a culture. A quick primer on how subalterns form outside of the hegemonic [...]

Footnote 85

See Chapter 13. To make the lesser (yet still significant) jump between innovators and early adopters you are going to need to involve Mavens among your innovators, and these Mavens will need to be interconnected. Return to Page

Footnote 84

See the Trend Growth figure in Chapter 1. The long tail, as an ecological space for memes, is broken up into four categories: Late Majority, Early Majority, Early Adopters, and Innovators. Return to Page

Footnote 83

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Footnote 82

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Footnote 81

Using flowscapes as described in the previous chapter. Return to Page

Footnote 80

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Ghandi Return to Page

Footnote 79

Hermes, or Thoth, was not simply the god of magicians in Egyptian and Greek mythology. He was also god of writing, science, and judge of the dead. His counterpart, the goddess Ma’at, seems to have created Mathematics, but mathematics falls under the rulership of Thoth as well. Together, they both are anthropomorphized embodiments of the [...]

Footnote 78

Autopoiesis literally means “auto (self)-creation” (from the Greek: auto – αυτό for self- and poiesis – ποίησις for creation or production), and expresses a fundamental dialectic between structure and function. Return to Page

Footnote 77

The intelligence-increasing techniques of Dr. Wenger outlined in his book The Einstein Factor rely on the mechanism of balancing input and output by outliers, individuals who find fringes to weave together. Return to Page

Footnote 76

Edward de Bono‘s flowscaping is ideal for analyzing an institutional body and diagramming the internal organs of an egregore.. Return to Page

Footnote 75

One such software is the open source program Freemind, available on Sourceforge and there are a number of other not-so-free options out there as well. We prefer doing all of this by hand, however, and usually use pencils and graph paper. Return to Page

Footnote 74

A term coined by Saint John of the Cross in his poem “Dark Night of the Soul” from the 16th century. Return to Page

Footnote 73

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Footnote 72

One author spent a year avoiding advertisements as much as possible, while consciously removing or marking out any corporate logo present in his daily environment. This experiment led to a kind of hyper-awareness of logomancy and its otherwise subliminal effects, and led to a development of a personal theory about psychological space which went on [...]

Footnote 71

We continue to promote collage work throughout this book because collage, by arranging pieces made of pre-existing media with a variety of materials into a new cohesive whole, is the same process of trimming, selecting, and arranging from various available sources that the brain naturally utilizes to make sense of its environment as it develops. [...]

Footnote 70

Retroactive enchantment is one approach to achieving this goal, while specific forms of soul-retrieval can also be adapted to this kind of internal work. Friends have also adapted Dianetic auditing from scientology combined with self-hypnosis toward similar results. Return to Page

Footnote 69

As Fenwick Rysen put it: SIGIL –> SERVITOR –> EGREGORE –> GODFORM Mark Defrates essay, along with related material, is available at Chaos Matrix’s library. Return to Page

Footnote 68

In astrology, the rising sign is most closely associated with the persona, with the sun and moon signs roughly analogous to one’s conscious and pre-conscious self-image. Return to Page

Footnote 67

Protocol is the expectation of how to behave within a particular context, and is often attached to a physical space (in this example, the coffee shop is used as a memetic diagram of a group cluster.) Return to Page

Footnote 66

People buy not to own, but to join the ranks of those who own a specific product. Think Two Products Ahead and Triggers both explore how best to leverage this motivation. Return to Page

Footnote 65

For further reference on these magical techniques we’ve described, we recommend Phil Hine’s book Prime Chaos in which he explains Sorcery Event Series, and Taylor Elwood‘s Sigil Web explanation in the book Space/Time Magic. Return to Page

Footnote 64

And puts one in mind of Indra’s Web, or Hesse’s The Glass-Bead Game. Return to Page

Footnote 63

St. Mae and St. Fox presented Pranks at Esozone 2008, and used the term ‘Memetic Piggybacking’ to describe what we’ve identified as a viral metabiological process. If you are interested in learning more about memetic pranks, viral infictions, memetic contagions, click here. Return to Page

Footnote 62

Viral video is a recent development, having first made an impression in the search engines around 2005. Examining Google Trends for ‘Viral Video’ provides a real-world version of a meme adoption pattern. As producers heard about this idea of viral video, more and more came online looking for, as well as producing, viral video. The [...]

Footnote 61

Not to mention the countless black metal homages being paid to Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, and the various other crawly forces at the edge of math. H. P. Lovecraft’s mythos is a complex, interconnected fictional mastermind session that will not die. Return to Page

Footnote 60

Much more about using triggers can be found in Kevin Hogan’s book Covert Persuasion and Joseph Sugarman’s book Triggers. Dave Lakhani released his book on Persuasion after we’d completed the manuscript for The Art of Memetics, or we would have included it in our print edition’s bibliography. We include it here to rectify that oversight. [...]

Footnote 59

See Spare, A.O. “Automatic Writing” to begin. Spare is one of the most important proto-chaos magicians of the last hundred years, and his artwork lies not fully anchored in this plane. Return to Page

Footnote 58

Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator–Based on socionics, a typing system that Carl Jung worked on, and which breaks up personality along four axis. Popular within corporate cultures, human resources divisions, and various mentoring programs, and probably as a result there are numerous online quizzes which will analyze your responses to tell you your four-letter personality type. Return [...]

Footnote 57

Wilson, Robert A. (1990) Quantum Psychology is an important text, as well as Farrell, Nick (2005) Gathering the Magic in finding groups and understanding the effect joining a group can have on the self and one’s self-image. Return to Page

Footnote 56

Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966) The Savage Mind provides the first reference to the importance of bricolage, although not the full application of it as a technique. Return to Page

Footnote 55

On a similar note, during the years from 1998 through until about 2004, I was exposed to an ongoing perpetual conversation within Astrology:1, one of the chat rooms at Yahoo.com —a chatroom that had a revolving cast of various chatters, and that often devolved into arguments and flame wars—it became obvious that the layer of [...]

Footnote 54

C. Harold, (2007) OurSpace – A brilliant treatment of the social movements that have flourished online, and the problematic nature of social value perceived as added capital. Return to Page

Footnote 53

R. Barthes, “Operation Margarine” in (1972) Mythologies Return to Page

Footnote 52

For an example of how ‘mere words’ can have a direct (yet unconscious) effect on physiology, see the episode in Blink by Malcolm Gladwell where the subject of a psychological experiment receives the hidden message of ‘old’ and moves slower as a result. Return to Page

Footnote 51

Edward witnessed an interaction very similar to the simplified description above. The more flexible male shut down his competitor to the point that the competitor developed a new option; he drank until he passed out and didn’t have to compete anymore. Return to Page

Footnote 50

Please bear in mind that we are not discounting his work, far from it. Thought Contagion, along with Richard Brodie’s Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme, are profoundly accessible works on the way that belief grows and manifests in culture. (Add MindControlMarketing and you’ve got the three books necessary to begin [...]

Footnote 49

One particularly relevant novel is Gibson, William (2003) Pattern Recognition Return to Page

Footnote 48

Read the chapter “Why Heather Can Write” in Jenkins, Henry (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide Return to Page

Footnote 47

Like the old joke goes, there’s 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don’t. Return to Page

Footnote 46

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Footnote 45

Meatspace: The affectionate term for physical interaction that arose in context via online discussions. See UrbanDictionary Return to Page

Footnote 44

K., Vonnegut, Mother Night Return to Page

Footnote 43

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Footnote 42

Alternate Reality Games and Direct Response Branding both develop and refine implementations of the Zeigarnik Effect and Mark Joyner discusses it in depth in Mind Control Marketing. Brand Managers note: Brand-jacking is not illegal (when done right). Return to Page

Footnote 41

Mark, Margaret and Pearson, Carol S. (2001) The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes Return to Page

Footnote 40

R. Barthes, S/Z Primarily of interest in that it is here that Roland Barthes puts forth this list: Hermeneutic Code Semic Code Proairetic Code Symbolic Code Referential Code Return to Page

Footnote 39

J. Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer We also recommend Center of the Cyclone: Looking into Inner Space Return to Page

Footnote 38

From the latin word Grigori, defined as the watchers or the nephilim in traditional mythology. Eliphas Lévi, in Le Grand Arcane (“The Great Mystery”, 1868) identifies “egregors” (sic) with the tradition concerning the fathers of the nephilim, describing them as “terrible beings” that “crush us without pity because they are unaware of our existence.” Modern [...]

Footnote 37

G. Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind Return to Page

Footnote 36

Leary, T. (1957). Interpersonal diagnosis of personality: Here’s a simplified version of the personality compass: For more, we recommend: Timothy Leary’s Interpersonal Behavior Circle John Birtchnell: Measures of Relating and Interrelating Society for Interpersonal Theory and Research Return to Page

Footnote 35

That which is inconceivable today is tomorrow’s product. Soon, spime wrangling will expose to the masses a pragmatic and technical way to grasp the emergent complex properties of memetics, as it will require a working knowledge of memetics to make sense of spimes. Spime is a word coined by Bruce Sterling in a 2004 speech, [...]

Footnote 34

McLuhan, M. in “The Medium is the Message” Return to Page

Footnote 33

Most discussions about magic certainly raise the pragmatist’s eyebrow. However, people who dismiss magic as a whole because of the explanations provided overlook the fact that we only make explanations if there’s something there to explain. In a sense, this is why there is a growing number of magicians and sorcerers delving into obscure and [...]

Footnote 32

Originally published in 1978, and republished with the additional text Psychonaut in 1987. Return to Page

Footnote 31

Feedback loops can be thought of as self-perpetuating situations, or active tautological events. The study of language evolution provides a way of thinking about the effect of feedback loops over time. Note: We were both unaware of the book I Am A Strange Loop (2007) by Douglas Hofstadler at the time we were writing The [...]

Footnote 30

Objects of Persuasion, focusing on the cognitive elements of persuasion, featuring a number of speakers. This video is an hour long, and we suggest some people keep a notebook at hand. Return to Page

Footnote 29

Several versions of this type of application are available for experimentation. Semacode ScanLife NeoReader Return to Page

Footnote 28

Grof, Stanislav and Bennet Hal Z. (1993) The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives Return to Page

Footnote 27

Phage is a term taken from the study of viruses and applied here as an analogy, along with the term capsid used earlier in the text. Phages are viruses which devour the cellular structure, creating copies of themselves in the process. Return to Page

Footnote 26

See Chapter Nine, the discussion about the massive multiplayer online worlds and specifically the differences between Second Life and World of Warcraft. Also see Footnote 55, regarding the effect of stress on a group mind. Return to Page

Footnote 25

Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes. The following video was produced by Michael Wesch and is titled The Machine is Us/ing Us from MediatedCultures Return to Page

Footnote 24

The following clip of Howard Bloom comes from The Pitch, Poker, and the Public, an interesting documentary on the art of the sales pitch: Howard Bloom’s book The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History succinctly presents some very powerful ideas about the structure of society as organism. Return to Page

Footnote 23

We highly recommend the Appendices in Shea, R. and Wilson, R.A. (1975) Leviathan, especially Gimel and Lamed. Sorting out the contradictory statements on magic from a historical perspective is a perplexing, yet enlightening task. However, essentially all magic boils down to the two words, “Reinforce Often.” Return to Page

Footnote 22

Lynch, Aaron. (1996) Thought Contagion. In this book, his analysis of Mormonism through the lens of memetics places emphasis on generational transmission, and highlights these factors as evolutionary pressures. Return to Page

Footnote 21

Marx, K and Engles, F. in “The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas” Return to Page

Footnote 20

Or that the communication methods themselves are predisposed toward carrying a specific type of “social change” meme – twitter, for example, was predisposed to carry a ‘twitter revolution’ meme, regardless of any real world situation. Return to Page

Footnote 19

A capsid is the outer protein shell of a virus, responsible for protecting the internal operating system of the virus, detecting suitable surrounding carriers for viral infection (i.e. cell walls) and for forming an opening into the suitable carriers. In memetics, the capsid is referring to the casing of a meme, or the point of [...]

Footnote 18

Teilhard writes of the unfolding of the material cosmos, from primordial particles to the development of life, human beings and the noosphere, and finally to his vision of the singularity. Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1959) The Phenomena of Man Return to Page

Footnote 17

The teleconference is also an ideal interface for a mastermind group working non-locally, especially when supplemented with file and document sharing online. Return to Page

Footnote 16

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Footnote 15

model of trend growth Anderson, Chris. (2006) The Long Tail. Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More Return to Page

Footnote 14

Appendix I describes in more detail what a sigil is and the process behind acts of sigilization. Eventually this will be part of the primary text, but for now you can read the uncorrected version here. Return to Page

Footnote 13

This is, indeed, a shout-out: Rigorous Intuition is an interesting example of apophenionic symbology and hyperstition at play. Commentary on a culture and it’s institutions has become a kind of myth-making in its own right, and this particular blog deconstructs contemporary events in a very unique way. Return to Page

Footnote 12

Currently this is a topic receiving serious attention from some people. We highly recommend these books by Howard Bloom as fascinating looks at behaviors of social groups as super-organisms: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century [...]

Footnote 11

Further Reading on Terministic Screens and Reality Tunnels: On Symbols and Society (Heritage of Sociology Series) – Kenneth Burke Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You and Your World – Robert Anton Wilson Return to Page

Footnote 9

We will be spelling Magick as magic for the entirety of this book. Return to Page

Footnote 8

Paco Xander Nathan’s discussion on corporate metabolism is highly recommended, and can be read here, at Tripzine Return to Page

Footnote 7

Think and Grow Rich is now in the public domain, which means I can embed the entire book here for you to read. In particular, be sure to read chapter 5 and chapter 14, in as much as those chapters deal specifically with aspects of a Master Mind Group (or Mastermind, as they’ve come to [...]

Footnote 6

The interesting thing is that if computer viruses had been more widespread in the seventies when Richard Dawkins wrote this book, he might have used viruses and worms as a depiction of non-biological evolution rather than coining the term “meme.” See his speech here. Return to Page

Footnote 5

Ellwood, Taylor, (2008) Multi-Media Magic, p.90. He comes to this definition after not one, but two chapters dealing with the range of definitions that have attempted to limit and contain the term Magic. Return to Page

Footnotes 1-4

The first four footnotes actually occur on pages 1 and 2 of the introduction and are referenced on page.