Re: virus: Virian Saints

Sodom (sodom@ma.ultranet.com)
Thu, 24 Jun 1999 13:57:37 -0400

I think we should probably limit nominations to 1 or 2 each in the beginning - if only to limit the amount of research we will need to do on everyone.

Love the second idea, obviously there are many writers/artists who contributed to the wealth of culture and thought deliberately, and your list has a bunch. What do we call those who are artistically gifted and contribute?

Bill Roh

"Joe E. Dees" wrote:

> I nominate Shannon & Weaver (who pioneered information
> theory), Von Neumann for many reasons (game theory, theory of
> self-replicationg systems, etc.), Charles Turing (for his
> test), Charles Sanders Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure and A. J.
> Greimas (who provided the structural underpinnings (semiotics) for
> the functional metaphor (memetics) - lesser lights include Louis
> Hjelmslev, Charles Morris, Thomas Sebeok, John Deely and
> Umberto Eco), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who described the root
> human situation of phenomenological ambiguity which permits the
> existence and appropriation of multiple stable but mutually
> exclusive memeplexes.
> I also support the creation of a separate pantheon of fiction
> writers such as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Herman Hesse,
> Stanislav Lem, Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Anthony
> Burgess, Vladimir Nabokov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jose Luis
> Borges, John Barth, James Joyce, Jerzy Kosinski, Thomas
> Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Salman Rushdie, J. D. Salinger and Nikolai
> Gogol, as literary uncles (feel free to add to this list).