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From: Mentifex <menti...@myuw.net>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.lang.forth,comp.ai.philosophy,alt.memetics
Subject: Re: The Art of the Meme -- 2012 March excerpts
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2012 13:26:05 -0700 (PDT)
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On Apr 1, 2:24=A0pm, Mentifex <menti...@myuw.net> wrote:
> On Mar 31, 1:04=A0pm, Mentifex <menti...@myuw.net> wrote:
>> [...]
PANIC

At the height of the Amiga phenomenon, panic seized
Mentifex because he had been out of college for twenty
years and had not yet created the True AI that he was
 put on this Earth to accomplish. He was in danger of
truly living down to his family's expectations of him.
Although I had not yet heard of memes as such,
I decided to go into maximum memetic overdrive
during the twentieth anniversary year of my graduation
from the University of Washington with a B.A. in ancient
Greek and Latin. Si quaeris monumentum, circumspice.
I looked around and saw that the field of artificial neural
networks (ANN) was looming large on the AI scene.
I decided to use the awesome powers of the Amiga computer
to publish a paid advertisement in the journal Neural Network
Review [?] at a cost of one hundred U.S. dollars for a whole page.

Desktop publishing had been pioneered on the Apple Macintosh
 and was now available on the Amiga. In my Amiga sales job at
Omni International Trading, I had free access to all the Amiga
software tools. I learned how to use the Symbol font for Greek
 letters and I quoted a major line from Aristotle's De Anima
 in ancient Greek as part of my ad. Then I wrote ad copy offering
 to send people the details of the Mentifex theory of mind for
artificial intelligence. Watch out, world! You will be assimilated,
and resistance is futile.

When the Mentifex AI ad hit the readership of the journal,
all the most ambitious go-getters immediately got in touch
with me and tried to determine if I was bringing anything new
to the table of the virtual seminar in neural networks.
I had not, they concluded, because I had only the design
for something and not an actual product. The excitement
died down, but the memetic ad campaign took on a life
of its own. I started mailing the ad itself out all around
the world. It was republished in seven or eight print
publications, including AI journals in Canada and Finland.

One educational outfit, run by a bunch of women, sent
the Mentifex AI ad back to me with a Post-It note and the
word "garbage" on it. What was that supposed to mean?
My feelings were hurt. Had they asked around about
Mentifex AI and gotten a negative endorsement?
Why would they go to the trouble to insult me?
Gradually I was learning that women, especially in
Seattle, would go out of their way to hurt the feelings
 of any guy whom they perceived as a worthless dweeb
 and a useless geek who did not fit into their worldview
 of how men were supposed to serve their female purposes
in life. It was bad enough when I would call up Second Love's
house and her brother would tell me that she could not
 come to the phone because she was washing her hair.
At the time I accepted the rationale meant to be an insult
and I did not recognize it as such, or I would have been
crestfallen.