Memespace

From Memography

A memespace has a unique alphanumeric identifier to disambiguate it from other memespaces. The present design for meme IDs is to have three parts, the memespace identifier, a unique identifier for a taxonomy (including thesauri, ontologies, subject headings, controlled vocabularies, etc.), and finally a locally unique alphanumeric identifier for the given meme.

Thus, a globally unique meme ID looks like MEMESPACE-TAXOSPACE-ID.

In cases where the meme is a node in a verbal taxonomy, you must consult the taxonomy to discover the value of the meme ID for that node.

Here are some initial proposed examples for memespace-taxospace combinations.

MEMO-UPC uses the Universal Product Code or barcode. A UPC consists of twelve digits, thus a valid meme ID is, for example, MEMO-UPC-036000291452.

MEMO-ISBN uses the International Standard Book Number. Thus the meme ID for Peter Morville's book on Ambient Findability that inspired memography and the memetic web would be MEMO-ISBN-0596007655.

MEMO-DDC could use the Dewey Decimal Classification number if we can arrange suitable licenses for small organization and even individuals for use with the Memography system for the memetic web. MEMO-DDC-959.7043 could be a meme ID for the Vietnam War. Since the DDC is translated into 30+ languages, in Vietnamese this is the meme ID for the "American" War. The DDC is copyright by the OCLC.

MEMO-SIC will use the Standard Industrial Classification codes.

MEMO-UNSPSC will use the United Nations Standard Products and Services Classification codes.

MEMO-RFID can use the new Radio Frequency IDentification system for identifying and tracking unique physical objects.

We propose to create memespaces for owners of domain names by the formula MEMO-TLD.DOMAIN.SUBDOMAIN.

MEMO-COM.GOOGLE and MEMO-COM.APPLE are thus automatically registered memespaces.

In this way, we can leverage the enormous amount of free tagging energy already invested at del.icio.us and Flickr by creating meme IDs as follows:

MEMO-COM.FLICKR-tagnamehash can be embedded in pages outside the Flickr website to share the aboutness of the tag. Since multiword tag names would be split up into word tokens by the search angines, we may need a hash to create a unique ID for multiword tags and tag hierarchies.

MEMO-ORG.WIKIPEDIA-pagenamehash. Many Wikipedia pages are ideally suited to serve as an aboutness page for a meme. Since multiword page names would be split up into word tokens by the search angines, we need a hash to create a unique ID, e.g., to distinguish history of philosophy from philosophy of history.

Both memespaces and taxospaces are examples of namespaces.

Within the context of a namespace, words and numbers have specific meanings. The namespace is said to disambiguate alternate meanings.

In Memography, a taxospace is always contained within a memespace. This means many different uses can be made of the same taxonomy, with the memespace identifier indicating which use.

Memespaces are related to the Uniform Resource Names (URNs) of the World Wide Web. URNs have not been widely used. Only a few dozen are been formally registered with IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (part of ICANN, the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers). A URN used as a memespace name will greatly increase the value of a URN.

Formal registration of a URN requires a cumbersome RFC procedure. Memography's Memespace Registry will offer a much simpler procedure for registering memespace names.

Examples of registered URNs that are proper memespace names are OASIS and IETF.