Reading the Naming What We Know excerpts got me thinking a lot about viral culture and its implications for the transfer and spread of knowledge across various spreads of time. Does anyone feel that viral cultures manipulate cultural trends in order to extract profit from them without much regard for the future?

The recurrence and discussion of Bitzer throughout these texts with regard to genre has me thinking about the extent to which genre is something that emerges as a direct consequence for a need for them. The reason I'm thinking that this is so provocative is because it makes me think back to our discussion about originality and how some people say it doesn't exist. However, the innovations that seem necessary within genres makes me think that originality may be better thought of as imminent rather than mythical.