"Working Memory"

[Peter Pirolli]

I sent a very terse vote for dme = "deme" but thought I should elaborate
my choice in the context of the current discussion.

I agree that "chunk" has unfortunately acquired some baggae from
common usage in the memory community and the Soar community.  I can
forsee papers on "The Different Conceptions of 'Chunk' in...", which is 
reason enough to avoid it.

dme = "dimee" or "dime" has no such baggage, is technically precise,
but has the same air of hacker-jargon as "wimee"

"wad" or "clog" might work just as "spin" "charm" "color" etc lost their
original meanings when applied to physics and brought in a bit of whimsy.

dme = "deme" on the other hand could be considered as a contraction
of "declarative meme" which is very precise both theoretically and technically,
and carries the right baggage.  From Dawkins, a "meme" is the smallest unit of
replicable cultural knowledge.  This is very similar to the notion of
a proposition (smallest unit of meaning that can be assigned a truth value).
It also implies the notion of "replicable" with is very important within
the physical symbol system hypothesis.  This also provides a subtle tie
from the theory of the Adaptive Character of Thought to one of the
best known public writers on adpatation and evolution.

--Pete