How We'll Forget John Lennon
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http://nautil.us/issue/68/context/how-well-forget-john-lennon0

Interviewing Cesar A Hidalgo about his article in Nature

* cultural ideas have a a universal decay function
    * two examples: his 20-something student not knowing the Lenon song
    "Imagine"
    * the crash of Elvis memorabilia prices -- the people owning started to
    die off, their children tried to sell but the buyers were dying off as
    well, so the price crashed
* decay pattern has two phases: first decay is fast (pop-culture
turn-over), second is long and slow (people showing their favourite things
to their kids)
* communicative memory vs cultural memory
    * communicative is what everyone is talking about (right now it is Trump
    and Trade wars)
    * cultural is what lasts longer
        * "athletes last longer than songs, movies and science papers"
* talks about a book "The Formula" by Albert-Laszlo Barabas which states that
quality and popularity can be equated in situations where performance is
measurable
    * good tennis players are popular because people can see the outcome,
    especially if there is hard/good game
    * those places where you cannot quantify, networks becoming the
    determining factor in popularity (e.g. art is about who knows the artist
    and spreads the word)