chunyu huang

Apply motivations to a concept(s)
Write a narrative description of the project(s). What is it, who is it designed for, what is it designed to do, what kind of technology does it explore, why should we care about it, where will we see or what is the project’s life beyond the classroom, how does it make a difference?
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After catching a virus on my computer through MSN Messenger recently, I curious in how viruses spread and move through networks. Many people are not aware of their vunerability and the impact of viruses, trogans, or worms until they catch it. My initial ideas were to design something that educates uninformed Internet users on harmful viral spread that they may be exposed to. It would discuss issues of how it is created, spread, blocked, and regenerated. The project could be posted on the web and serve as an educational and preventative piece in the spread of malicious infectious information.

In my research I came across the term meme which a unit of cultural information that represents a basic idea that can be transferred from one individual to another, and subjected to mutation, crossover and adaptation. Memes are important because they are the basic building blocks of our minds and culture, in the same way that genes are the basic building blocks of biological life. Memes can be ideas about freedom, justice, truth, communism, capitalism, religion, and any popular songs that gets stuck in your head. The spread of memes has become easier through technology and with that comes both good memes and memes with negative impacts such wiping out languages and cultures. However, Dan Dennett, a speaker at a TED talk, emphasized that deciphering what is good or bad memes is not the focus, studying how it spread and why and getting the facts is what is important. The trick is not to annihilate germs but foster public healthcare and the like that would encourage the spread of benign mutations of toxic varieties.

Talks Dan Dennett: Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/116

Tracking Bloggers With Blogdex
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/07/45546
Blogdex is like a search-engine spider that looks at weblogs and extracts and ranks the most popular hypertext links. The creator Cameron Marlow said, “It’s a way of looking at Internet memetics, the way memes evolve and develop over time.”
 

PhotoMemes.org – Infectious Photo Projects
Site that lists photography-related memes on the web. Contents are interesting photo projects that focus on a uniquely contagious idea or theme like “A Day in the Life” and  “Dogs in Cars.”

Memes tags:
8 Random Things
Post 8 random facts about yourself and tag 8 other people

The Great Global Number Meme
People who are tagged take and post a photo of a number connected to themselves  that follows on in numerical order from the previous one

1. vid/podcast
2. spread memes  through chain or website
3. observe flow of memes