I'm not sure why, but I get along great with Irish and Scottish people. It sounds strange to say, especially having grown up in America where such distinctions are becoming as important as eye color. Much of America is its own kind of monotone, with regional flavor, but a shared sort of sameness.

It may have something to do with my grandparents. Arthur Falconer, Sr, left Scotland with the Merchant Marines at age 15 and sailed the world till he settled in New York City, where he met Sally King, herself from Ireland. The fact that my grandparents sounded the part may explain my affinity. But I didn't really spend much time with them. I couldn't tell you one story about their life across the water. I simply don't know any. And my father was as American as they come, a real Madison Avenue John Wayne type: unflinching, ambitious, and arrogant.

So why do I feel closer in temperment to the "undiluted" Irish and Scots that I know than the many Americans I have so much more in common with? It's difficult to pin down, this connection, particularly without resorting to stereotypes, but it's there. My latest theory is that it's due to an unseen inheritence, that my grandparents live on in a million small ways through my memes.

Yes, there's the obvious things: religion, males carve the meat, strong families. But I suspect my inheritence is much more subtle than that. I can imagine an ecosystem of attitudes at work, so many they can't rightly be labeled. This emergent semantic similiarity between people can be felt, not explained: we're on the same wavelength, simpatico, kin.

And what of the Semantic Web, our current undertaking, this new web of meaning? Will this too be a playground for unseen inheritence? Will our memes carry across the shifting structures of this new digital dinnertable?

Semantics isn't just a label thing. Memes aren't just buzzwords. There's a richness, a real legacy, at work all around us. Our efforts in this space will forever change the way we're all remembered. The parts of us that live on will be truer to who we are: our patterns, our insights, our memes.