The Memes of Production: A cultural studies weblog

I need a little help with a project I’m working on.

It would be really cool to find out what was the very first internet meme. I know this is impossible—by their nature internet memes are only recognised retrospectively*, and the first one would have been so long ago as to be long forgotten.

So what I’m looking for are examples of really old internet memes that still have some sort of archival existence (maybe just an article talking about it). Memes being intrinsically ephemeral, I’m struggling to remember one from last week, and I’m hoping the collective consciousness of teh internetz might help jog my memory.

Add any you can think of in the comments.

And thanks.

*OK, except maybe for something that was so suited to be a meme that it was recognised almost before it started, such as the Kanye West interruption meme.

An interesting article by Lynne Spender in Meanjin about Google’s ambitions to digitise the world’s books (probably behind the paywall):

Perhaps I am optimistic by nature, but when Google first announced that it was planning to digitise the world’s books and create the greatest library ever, I was enthusiastic. I thought it was an example of digital technology doing for our generation—and those that follow—what print technology did for the generations of readers and writers after its introduction in the fifteenth century. Just as Gutenberg’s printing press brought increased and independent access to knowledge and information 600 years ago, it seemed possible that the Google Library Project’s searchable database of the world’s books would allow access to our entire cultural heritage in digital format. It would be a new res publica litterarum for a new age of digital enlightenment.

Spender’s article focused mainly on the IP and copyright issues of digitising books, but my interest is in the fundamental issue of a for-profit company owning potentially the only digital copies of the Western literary heritage. I’ve written about this before.

To this point Google seems to have acted honourably (the “Paper of Record” issue notwithstanding), but I still fear that one day all this treasure will find itself behind a paywall. Organisations such as Project Gutenberg cannot compete with the finances of Google and will be left behind.

As an update to my earlier post, it seems that Google has finally sorted out the technical problems and most of the material that was available through “Paper of Record” is now available through the Google News Archive Search. There is an interesting overview here from Inside Higher Ed. However, there remain complaints that the search interface is not nearly as user-friendly as the original.

A new study reported by Ars Technica reveals that more than half of the people with Twitter accounts have never sent a tweet and have no followers:

A new report about how the majority of the population uses Twitter reveals that most people, well… don’t really use it. The microblogging service has grown exponentially over the last year, but a little more than half of its users have never sent a single tweet, according to the latest report from HubSpot. The report reminds us that, like many Web services, much of the content is produced by a small number of users while everyone else likes to look in and watch.

In breaking news, I can also reveal that many people who buy books never get around to reading them; that video-tapes and DVR harddrives are full of shows that never get watched; and that a significant number of wardrobes in this country contain unused exercise equipment bought from late-night infomercial programmes.

sigh…

Since it was started in 1997, Google’s mantra has been “Don’t be evil”, perhaps with a sideways glance at another world-straddling software company that started out with guileless and youthful exuberance, and ended up as the evil empire. And certainly Google’s image is one of benign access, not control. We love the way they change the famous logo to celebrate holidays and significant events, and we all got nostalgic for their tenth birthday and marvelled at the clunky old designs, despite the fact that this pre-history only went back to 1995!

But I’ve been nervous about the fact that Google is buying up online archives, and embarking on their own digitisation programmes. Yes, there is a lot of stuff out there that needs to be preserved, but isn’t that the role of national libraries? I’m worried about the prospect of a private company owning so much of a nation’s heritage: even a non-evil company like Google.

Then the other day I heard about the case of a small newspaper archive site that disappeared after being vacuumed up by the Google machine:

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Re-posting Jason Wilson at Gatewatching.

I’ve been thinking that it might be handy to compile a list of Australian academics/researchers who are using Twitter. I’m trying to make a start with this post. If people could add themselves in the comments thread, giving their name, position and username, I’ll compile this information in a repost on this blog. I’ll start.

Dr Jason Wilson
Lecturer in Digital Communications, University of Wollongong
http://twitter.com/jason_a_w

The motivation for this has to do with putting everyone in touch with each other, and us in touch with students. The last few posts I’ve done have been about how I’m using Twitter as a teaching and learning tool. Many students are now signed up, and getting to grips with what the service is all about.

I’ve been telling them how many leaders in their field of study are available, but it’s not easy to find everyone listed in one spot. I hope I can provide this for my students and others here.

Jason’s definition includes postgrads, sessional tutors, and so on: anyone working in a university or research context. Please follow the link and out yourself.

Posted on—I assume—every Facebook user’s page this afternoon:

A couple of weeks ago, we posted an update to our Terms of Use that we hoped would clarify some parts of it for our users. Over the past couple of days, we have received a lot of questions and comments about these updated terms and what they mean for people and their information. Because of the feedback we received, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

That’s the trouble with Web 2.0: those pesky content providers just won’t sit down and do as they’re told!

OK, I might be a little late coming to this, but I have always harboured a mistrust of Wordpress blogs because of that irritating “Snap Shot” feature which, in spite of my best efforts, I have never been able to disable.

However, having been tipped off by a self-confessed “Wordpress junkie” (thanks Clif), I redoubled my efforts, and thanks to the miracle of teh internetz, I discovered the solution.

If you have a blog on wordpress.com, for the love of god think of the children and disable that wretched piece of ad-ware.

Some of you reading this (admittedly, not many) have come to this post because of a notification from Twitter. As I have mentioned previously, the magic of Twitterfeed and RSS provides an automatic system to advise of new posts on the blog. I set this up for a couple of reasons: first, obviously, I’d like to increase the readership of the blog and this seemed like a good place to start; second, I am exploring various technologies that might help keep a group of people in touch with activities, when I cannot rely on them actively seeking out the information.

Increasingly we are seeing Twitter used for this purpose: news services such as The Age have Twitter accounts, as do CNN, Crikey, and others—including some that only exist on Twitter —as do social and political groups, and of course, politicians. Even The University of Queensland has its own news feed.

But I have my reservations about this.

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I previewed this back in September, but the Government blog has become a reality. Timely perhaps, given the current campaign over Internet censorship which at the time of writing had been referenced by two of the three commenters.

You can find the blog here. Not the most user-friendly URL I have ever seen, which suggests that the department might have a way to go before it really “gets” blogging.

Lindsay Tanner’s welcome is full of the rhetoric we’ve come to expect from governments:

We are also genuine about wanting to use online consultation to improve government-citizen relationships around public policy. We want real outcomes from online consultation, not a new channel to distribute a press release.

So this is a learning process. These are trials so we may get things wrong. But we hope to come out the other side with a better picture of how engaged, responsive, timely and comprehensive we need to be in order to engage effectively with citizens online.

Time will tell whether they can live up to these brave statements…

The has been a lot of discussion about the role of social networking in the recent US elections, as well as in the 2007 Australian Federal election. Sometime Memes commenter Barry Saunders looked at Obama’s online strategy and its implications for the Australian political landscape in a recent article for ABC Online:

However, as we watch Kevin Rudd getting back on the bandwagon and the political fallout of Obama’s win in the USA, we can take comfort that early adopters are giving the political process a boot up the proverbial, and thanks to Obama, nerds are hot. (“Fireside chats in the 21st century”, ABC Online)

Now I don’t disagree with Barry, but it uses a rhetoric that is increasingly popular in recent times, and is perhaps best marked by the phrase “the first internet election”. This has been used to describe the US presidential election and the 2007 Australian federal election, although technically the honour should probably go to Eastern Ontario voters, who back in 2003 participated in “what is being called the first all-electronic election of North America” by registering their votes by phone, or on the internet. The argument is that the diversity and speed of online media has lead to a greater scrutiny of—or at least, better access to—the political process. The New York Times puts it this way:

Many of the media outlets influencing the 2008 election simply were not around in 2004. YouTube did not exist, and Facebook barely reached beyond the Ivy League. There was no Huffington Post to encourage citizen reporters, so Mr. Obama’s comment about voters clinging to guns or religion may have passed unnoticed. These sites and countless others have redefined how many Americans get their political news. (NYT, 3 November 2008)

Fair enough. But some commentators go further and claim that this access and prominence has somehow led to a further democratisation of the political process.

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