Meme

From Memography

A meme in the context of memography is a simple idea that can be identified with one or more meme IDs to describe what a meme is about - its aboutness - and therefore what a document containing that meme is about.

A parallel concept from library science is the use of subject headings to describe a document or work.

There are many sources for memes - concepts, ideas, things, but the best sources are the controlled vocabularies in use in every organization. These may be flat lists like authority files, keywords, glossaries, folksonomies, or structured hierarchies like taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, or faceted classifications.

Controlled vocabularies become the labels for categories (metadata) to organize information. Some people equate the organization of information with the creation of usable, findable "knowledge."

Categorization is followed by classification of content into the categories. This can be done with metadata outside the documents, in XML/RDF markup, for example. Or it can be done with metadata inside the documents like meme IDs and memelinks. We call this embedded aboutness because the memelink takes you to the meme's aboutness page.