Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for March 01, 2015

Starbucks should charge for space to would be entrepreneurs, writers, etc. instead of charging for coffee.

Why would Jeff feel that being called ‘disruptive’ is a supportive comment?

I agree with Borntalkingback above and am very glad that the next comic in my lineup is Fred Basset.

Trudeau might as well retire Doonesbury and be done with it. I suspect today’s strip is something he’s probably had in a file for years.

A meme is a viral concept that people talk about and make jokes about and send pictures about and ridicule and defend and debate and beat to death and resurrect for more beatings ad nauseam. Grumpy Cat is a meme. A black and blue dress that’s white and gold is a meme. Captain Picard face-palming is a meme.A pivot is a change of direction for a meme, or linking memes together for a whole new meme cycle. Debating what colors the llamas on the loose really were would be a pivot.Getting older should mean you know more about the world, not less. I’m no spring chicken and just got older today, and I know about memes and pivots and making them. Happy birthday to meme.

At least for me (having spent too many years having to pretend that business-babble has some significance), the joke is the ongoing inversion: most big innovations are in some way disruptive (by definition). Clueless wanna-be entrepreneurs invert this, supposing that anything disruptive must therefore be an innovation. They are wrong (most disruptions are just disruptions with no lasting effect or value), and the disconnect between their HBR-spawned world view and reality is funny (unless you made the mistake of investing in them).

Happy Birthday to Coyoty, and thanks for the clarification and reminder. Also thanks to Borntalkingback for raising the question on the behalf of all of us who presumed we were the only ones who did not quite get the context of meme here.

The word ‘Meme’ was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene.” It rhymes with ‘gene’ and like genes can spread through social groups by a process analogous to natural selection (mutation, variation, differential success). Like successful genes that arise by mutation memes also can spread through a population, replacing other memes. We sometimes refer to this as “going viral.” For more, see the Wikipedia entry.

@Alabama_Al

“Trudeau might as well retire Doonesbury and be done with it. I suspect today’s strip is something he’s probably had in a file for years.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.

Has it ever occurred to you that might be a whole new generation of people who weren’t even born yet when everystrip was new. They night be reading this right now for the first time. Maybe everything doesn’t revolve around you.LIKE WE NEED MORE CRITICS!

Borntalkingback

“I’m getting old. I still can’t get my head around what a meme is.”.

As originally conceived, a meme is the informational equivalent of a gene, changing how people see the world around them without having to take generations to pass from person to person.

I would like to thank everyone who explained what “meme” “pivot” and “disruptive innovation” is!I will now go back and reread the strip with a whole new understanding..And I rarely read this far in comments, but this was worth it.

Without “Fail” I don’t imagine his teachers ever said anything about him.

A pivot is a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet function that allows you to group, collate, count, etc, a list of data into an organized table of your own design. It’s a bit advanced and tricky.

Thank you Mr. T for again stimulating our minds to think, with humor.Thank you commenters for helping us old-timers ease into the 21st century.Thank you Calliopejane for your insight. A+

This is how we got Facebook — a useless service that people become convinced they need.

To my critics above: There is a joke, somewhat too lengthy to post here, that ends with, “Oh, but you should have seen him 20 years ago!”.It doesn’t matter what your profession is. When you rest on your past laurels, and are now obviously just mailing it in, it’s time to retire.

Well, there is a guy selling snow, so go figure.

I’ve enjoyed today’s discussion and appreciate input from the cognoscenti who defined from differing points of view. I enjoy Doonesbury even if I can’t understand all the new tech terminology. Today I made up my own joke from the material, even though I drew the wrong conclusion. I thought it funny that even though what the teachers said was derogatory, Jeff took it as a compliment or ignored it and went right on with his pursuits. This reminds me of a time when I saw Peter Schickele of “PDQ Bach” fame, and he was telling jokes that could be taken on more than one level. There was a woman sitting beside me who would laugh at broad jokes and say “aww” when he poked fun at himself satirically. I would laugh at subtle, in-joke type stuff. She and I sat there laughing at different jokes and probably thinking that the other was unsophisticated or nuts.

Must also say that I’ve gotten quite old myself (BTW, Happy Birthday, Coyoty!), and though I’m still striving to learn new stuff (read as much of the NY Times as my slow-moving brain can process), my ability to understand tech stuff, never way up there, has atrophied dismally. I usually go along with new terms, but the word “app” makes my hackles rise. I don’t have no apps, don’t want no apps, and don’t want to hear about them. Harrrumph!

Funny, based on the buzzwords, I thought this was a brand-new, cutting edge strip. I’m so old I didn’t realize all this was decades old, too.

Some here seem to have forgotten that the Sunday strips are NEW!

I’m trying to imagine what drives someone to find a website with a comic, and then go complain about the existence of the comic. No matter the supposed complaint, it always smells like elephant gas.