LINKS

UNDERSTANDING MEME'S


RICHARD DAWKINS:

Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions,
ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate
themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm
or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping
from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be
called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes
it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and
his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself,
spreading from brain to brain.
Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically
but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally
parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation
in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a
host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say,
'belief in life after death' is actually realized physically, millions of times
over, as a structure in the nervous systems of people all over the world.
 

GLENN GRANT:

A meme (pronounced "meem") is an idea that replicates by
symbiotically infecting human minds and altering their
behavior, causing them to propagate the meme -- similar
to the way a t-phage virus reproduces by hijacking the
DNA of a bacterium. Unlike a virus, which is encoded in
DNA molecules, a meme is nothing more than a pattern of
information, one that happens to have evolved a form
which induces people to repeat that pattern. Individual
slogans, ideas, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions,
and fashion are typical memes.

Whether memes can be considered true life forms or not is
a topic of some debate, but this is irrelevant: they behave
in a way similar to life forms, allowing us to combine the
analytical techniques of epidemiology, evolutionary
science, immunology, linguistics, and semiotics, into an
extremely effective system known as "memetics". Rather
than debate the inherent "truth" or lack of "truth" in an
idea, memetics is largely concerned with how that idea
itself gets replicated.

Memetics is vital to the understanding of cults, ideologies,
and marketing campaigns of all kinds, and it provides the
best immunity from dangerous information-contagions.
The neophyte reader, for instance, should be aware that
he or she has just been infected with the meta-meme, the
meme about memes....

Share-Right (S), 1990, by Glenn Grant, PO Box 36 Station
H, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 2K5. (You may reproduce this
material, only if your recipients may also reproduce it, you
do not change it, and you include this notice.)
 
 

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HERE ARE SOME LINKS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON MEME's




Meme Central
http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm

Wired Online: Brain Tennis-Meme's
http://wwww.hotwired.com/braintennis/96/43/index0a.html

How to make Memes and Influence People
http://www.tufts.edu/as/cogstud/papers/ecointen.htm

alt.memetics
http://maxwell.lucifer.com/virus/alt.memetics/index.html
 
 

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