General Knowledge Quiz #218

Debatable. Richard Dawkins coined the term in his book The Selfish Gene in 1976. The Internet was birthed in 1969 when a connection was made between a computer terminal at Stanford University and another at UCLA. But some people count 1983 as the birth of the Internet since that's when standard TCP/IP was adopted.

However, the term definitely predates people copying and sending goofy pictures with big-font words written on them to all their friends on Facebook, and is much more interesting an idea than that and it's unfortunate that so many people don't know the original meaning. Worth looking up if you're not familiar.

I think he means that the term predates the world wide web, or ‘the internet as most people know it.’ But of course you knew that.

ha... the world wide web is not the Internet. If most of the people you know think it is... then most of the people you know are misinformed. Most of the people I know were using the Internet for years before Berners-Lee and CERN made minor contributions toward its commercialization, and wouldn't confuse the two.

Even the latter date I gave above (1983), realistically over a decade after the birth of the Internet, is still 6 years before the "world wide web" has launched. I think it was 1988 when my friend Chris got his Prodigy account. And even before that... my cousin Rich and I were accessing dial-up BBS games and news sites and sending e-mail. (and the first Internet "meme" might have been sent later still, around 1996)

So... 1. no, I wouldn't have made the assumption you made, and don't know that Dimby would, either. I'll be kind and assume he didn't. and 2. stand by my original point.

You might think that I was very obviously referring to the Internet as most people know it, i.e., the World Wide Web. But actually, Kal is right; I'm saying that meme is older than the Stanford and UCLA Internet. However, my grandad was really good friends with Richard Dawkins. Ol' Richard'd been using the term "meme" for decades before he wrote The Selfish Gene. "Meme this and meme that", grandpappy would always say about ol' Richard. Grandad asked Richard if he wanted coffee once, and Richard just screamed MEEEEEME right in his face. Needless to say, it's an old term.

All the same shape in Australia too.

I believe the 4 shapes in the UK are 1) tumour 2) two tumours stuck together 3) squashed tumour 4) nugget-shaped. All of which become infinitely more appetising on the way home from the pub at 2am.

A typical America-centric question which the rest of the world has no clue about…let alone wrong in the vast majority of countries where McDonalds is sold

yup, as we all know, "American" knowledge is actually in fact and indisputably "General" knowledge - they are synonymous ;-)