I had my ritual of making extra copies: memos written on the notebook, typed in the native Notes, and taken as photos at the same time, books that one for reading, one for reserve, occasionally a e-book version in case of commuting emergency.
It went on well along with the other ritual of sharing identical updates: basically on Weibo, on Wechat from time to time and Twitter, Facebook for a rainy day. (Hail IFTTT.)
Someday the updates are rants on ongoing news and upcoming trends, the other day they are quotes I found in blogs and books.
I won't identify myself as a loquacious person but I do share a lot.
Thanks to merely overlapping audience on my social networking spheres, my friends seemed to be fine with my habit, until one came up.
"Why are you doing so?"
"Why not? They're interesting and inspiring…"
OK, this one is an enthusiastic programmer who would really appreciate a sloppy T shirt as gift if only with big KISS mantra on it. And then the conversation ran wild.
"My point is on why REDUNDANCY!"
Over the 15 minutes that followed, a short discourse upon Entropy, universe and depravation of modern society proceeded.
But wait a second, how did my sharing have to do with entropy any way?
After the skirmish it seemed to be, I reflected on my actions and made it clear to a theory:
Memes have to reproduce themselves through the machines (me in this case) to spread and survive in an overloaded information torrent of our time.
I don't invent this for the concept of meme was stated by Richard Dawkins decades ago at the time even Richard wouldn't have expected it as such a buzzword until now.
Maybe what I shared is nothing more than mundane gibberish but that doesn't quite matter. The memes that prove more effective and competitive will be favored therefore remain. Nevertheless the underdogs in the pool are not garbage or burdens from the standpoint of evolution.
About 8% of human DNA has biological function and there is no evidence that the rest 92% contributing at all. Does that mean much of DNA is useless? Asides from different definitions of "functional", hypotheses regarding so-called junk DNA include important non-coding but "data-pending" purpose that hard to identify, or provisional dysfunction at present.
It's such a relief that my programmer friend won't read this article but there are throngs of programmers here so fingers crossed for what I'm going to say:
Redundancy is my favorite word, randomness coming next. Without them working together in their way, as one of the most bizarre occurrences since the Big Bang, I a homo sapien attached with a smart phone wouldn't be here typing this rant.
In Darwinism I do believe.
So, share what you like. Share what you care. Share what you believe to do help, as much as you can. Let it live long and prosper (or not). And leave natural selection of Information Age doing its job.