Evolution + communities
September 17th, 2003 by HenI suspect this is something big in some area of academia I have no clue about. Still, I enjoy waffling.
I like the idea of evolution, I’ll admit to it. It’s not the only game in town, but it’s one of the fixtures. If it applies to biological beings, why doesn’t it apply to other things? Planets, stars, time, groups of people.
I’ve read occasionally of memes. The idea equivalent of genes. I need to read on them someday. What really interests me though is the evolution of groups of people. It strikes me that communities are made up of nodes, and that one of the prime roles of each node is as a connector between that community and another [or more].
Anyway, point of the blog entry is, does anyone know of any good books on the subject? Should I be reading Dawkins’ selfish gene for memes, or is there something else that focuses on communities rather than just ideas?
September 18th, 2003 at 3:30 am
i’ve not read it, but there was a lot of thought activity generated by “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.
http://www.gladwell.com/tp_excerpt2.html
for example, http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/tippingblog.htm
September 18th, 2003 at 11:48 pm
Hi Hen,
Have a look at http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/2003/vol7/blute_m.html
This is about “scientific communities” but the approach could probably be applied to any community in which production/evolution of ideas plays a role. The approach is debatable, but interesting.
In addition to Dawkins, you might also check out Daniel Dennett’s stuff (e.g. Consciousness Explained, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea) for another perspective on memes.
Applying this concept to the evolution of OSS communities is a very interesting idea.