Category Archives: memetics

Aaron Lynch Mystery Ends, He Passed Away

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If you found this page from entering his email: aaron@thoughtcontagion.com or aaron@mcs.net heads-up. 3 years and one month later – better late than never. I just learned that Aaron Lynch the author of Thought Contagion had passed away a few years ago.

Aaron was a phycist by training but really ahead of his time with his own ideas about memetics. I was introduced to him by my old boss from Louisville-based Military Channel (the original in ’98). When I saw his site and realized he was in Chicago, I contacted him and we met up with him for dinner on one visit and staid in touch. Aaron’s work hit on alot of what anecdotally worked in various viral marketing projects that I’ve been involved with – his work was very accessible.

Aaron and I last spoke over lunch at Charlie’s Ale House in Lincoln Park, Chicago back in June 2002 after I had returned from RealMedia. It was after 9/11 and he shared some new projects with me including 1) Sexually-Transmitted Beliefs, 2) Consulting work he was doing for the CBOT or Merc Exchange and 3) A hush-hush project that involved the government.

The Coroner’s Report stated that Aaron Lunch died from an accidental overdose of painkillers . He was laid to rest in Homewood Gardens, Illinois.

Crossing the Chasm 2.0…

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For fans of the legendary treatise on enterprise technology marketing.

Geoffrey is a partner at Mohr Davidow these days and gave an interesting SVASE presentation at Microsoft’s campus on February 28, 2008 – very well-attended. He is working on a new book…guess what the names is?

🙂

In a Web 2.0-crowdsourcing-kind-of-genuflection, Geoffrey asked for feedback from attendees. Here are some thoughts albeit late that I’m repurposing from an email sent to Geoffrey.

  • There is less of a difference in the Web 1.0 vs. 2.0 split than it appears. Having been on both B-C and B-B sides of the world – both are subject to essentially viral/memetic considerations at the chasm point.
  • In Geoffrey Moore’s 1.0 model he called it, “Bowling Pins/Tornado”…Isn’t this really the same social phenomenon of the so-called “tipping point” of Malcom Gladwell?
  • True enough that market participant motivation is not exactly the same, but there is a finite set of human behaviors that still motivate purchase decisions: greed, fear, ego, etc…

Presentation Powerpoint.

An edited MP3 of the talk for online media/technology folks.