Disco NT

The "Mental" Virus

Conventional wisdom will have you believe that software viruses are created for reasons of mischief with the purpose of damaging computer systems. But this is not the whole story. A software virus is modeled on a real world biological virus. It is a software entity that uses other software entities to propagate itself and its not a physical "thing" like a biological virus. So looking at a virus as a logical "thing" rather than a physical "thing" can free us to regard them in a different manner and make us able to look for them in other non-computer software systems such as our minds.

So what might a "Mental" virus be like?

If we list some of the attributes of a virus, they might be;

1. Uses the host to create copies of itself and propagate them.
2. Makes use of slight variations in it's own structure to confuse host defenses.
3. Damages it's host in the process of propagation.

So are there any candidates for "Mental" viruses at large at the moment?

Candidate 1 - The "TLA"

"TLA" stands for Three Letter Acronym. These are nasty little "things" that invade your mind. They are generally spread by Marketing people and Journalists. The one I particularly noticed was "B2B" meaning Business-To-Business selling. One business selling directly to another. Does "B2B" meet the criteria for a "Mental" virus?

1. One person will say this to another and it sticks in your head. TICK
2. It has mutated into "B2C" (....To-Customer) "B2A" (....To-All). TICK
3. Don't you hate knowing about this? TICK

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