Memetic Engineering 101
A Brief Overview of Memetics and a
Practical Experiment in Memetic Engineering
The History of Memes
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Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976)
"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.”
William S. Burroughs
“Language is a Virus”
Daniel Dennett & Douglass Hofstadter in the ‘80s
Variant definitions, expansion, refinement
Susan Blackmore et al. In the 90s
Creating the new science of memetics; “Just as genes have created our bodies,
so memes have created our minds and our cultures”
Memes Are...
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Replicators
Things which seem to exist to replicate themselves: genes and life itself;
replicators tend to give rise to “order” without “design” (Dawkins’ theme)
Analogous to Genes
As units of cultural inheritance, propagated through imitation and communication
(“vectors”), subject to significant “selection pressure”
Analogous to Infections/Diseases
Lamarkian not Darwinian (ie. change occurs in an individual not a generation)
Competitive, Selfish (“Me! Me!”)
Selfish memes, like selfish genes, spread as a function of their nature, and they
can act in competition with the genes (eg. birth control, celibacy)
Metaphorical
At least in part, which has led to criticism of their usefulness, eg. S J Gould
A Meme
“Meme" itself is a (meta-)meme
Memeplexes and Units
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Memeplexes
Just as Gene Complexes give rise to complex biological characteristics,
Memeplexes give rise to large-scale ideas:
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“Progressive evolution of more effective mind-parasites will have two aspects. New
‘mutants’' (either random or designed by humans) that are better at spreading will
become more numerous. And there will be a ganging up of ideas that flourish in one
another's presence, ideas that mutually support one another just as genes do and as I
have speculated computer viruses may one day do. We expect that replicators will go
around together from brain to brain in mutually compatible gangs. These gangs will
come to constitute a package, which may be sufficiently stable to deserve a collective
name such as Roman Catholicism or Voodoo.” (Dawkins)
Units of Memetics
Memetics has been criticised for the fuzziness of its units
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“It doesn't too much matter whether we analogize the whole package to a single virus,
or each one of the component parts to a single virus. […] What matters is that minds
are friendly environments to parasitic, self-replicating ideas or information, and that
minds are typically massively infected.” (Dawkins)
Why You Should Care
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Science Fiction is highly memetic in nature
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Literature and art are very powerful vectors for memes, and many memes
originate in art, eg:
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Hari Seldon’s Psychohistory as meta-memetic engineering
Snow Crash/Diamond Age
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The Future is Memetic
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Susan Blackmore says, of memes, “we’d better start finding out [about them]
soon” (cf. “Forget-Meme-Not”)
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The Power of Self-fulfilling Prophecy
“With our thoughts…”
Genes vs Memes
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"In definition genes and memes are comparable. The gene is an instruction for
building proteins, stored in a cell and passed on by reproduction. The meme is
an instruction for producing behaviour, stored in a brain and passed on to other
brains by imitation. (Blackmore)
“[t]here are many differences in the way the replication takes place. Genes use
the cellular machinery to copy themselves rather accurately. Memes have to be
copied by using the brain itself as the replicating machinery. One person has to
observe another's behaviour and work out somehow how to reproduce it. It is, if
you like, a kind of reverse engineering. Say you snap your fingers above your
head. I can copy this action relatively easily, yet the processes involved in my
doing so must be fiendishly complex and we are nowhere near to understanding
them. What we do know is that humans are supremely good at imitating each
other and do so a great deal from very early on in their lives. It is this fiendishly
complicated process that makes the transmission of memes possible. "
(Blackmore)
The Origins of Consciousness?
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Imitation and Self-Awareness
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University of Parma studies in late ‘90s indicate “mirror neurones” which fire during motor activity, but also
when observing someone else performing the same action (“Monkey See Monkey Do”)
Manifests as twitchy feeling watching people opening packets, tins etc. (the “here; let me do it” compulsion)
as well as empathic pain (eg. hand injuries) etc.
Appears to extend to “Mind-reading” or “Simulation Theory of Mind” whereby we feel we understand what’s
happening in another’s mind (an alternate to “theory theory”, which claims people build common-sense
understandings of others)
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Making Big Brains
"Imagine early hominids who, for good biological reasons, gained the ability to imitate each other and to
develop simple language. Once this step occurred memes could begin to spread. […] Let us assume that
some people would have slightly larger brains and that larger brains are better copiers. As more and more
people began to pick up these early memes, the environment would change so that it became more and
more necessary to have the skills in order to survive. So these slightly larger brained people would have an
advantage. That, I propose, is how we got our big brains.” (Blackmore)
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A New Kind of Mind
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Memes may be added, removed or changed many times in a person's life time. The ability for humans to
rapidly change our society and our surrounding environment made it necessary for some adaptive
mechanism to be built in our mind that would allow for these rapid societal and environment changes.
According to Daniel Dennett, a person is the entity created when “`A particular sort of animal is properly
furnished by, or infested with, memes.''
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Holism vs Reductionism
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Memetics is a Holistic Paradigm
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(cf. “Seven Pillars” discussion)
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Holism is “Fuzzy Science”
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Generally less “testable”
Cross-disciplinary in approach
Examples of Holistic Science
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James Lovelock's "Gaia"
Howard Bloom's "Global Brain"
Vernor Vinge's "Singularity"/Damien Broderick's "The Spike”
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Is Science inherently memetic?
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Heresy! (The argument that it isn’t is a very important part of the meme)
Variants and Arguments
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Aaron Lynch
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“Thought Contagion”; independent origination, 1978
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Tends to use memetics to support a kind of Social Darwinism: “Codes that get themselves imparted to the
most children have long ago out-populated alternative codes.”
Does all of social science reduce to memetics? Of course not. I don't even assert that all beliefs are memes
[...] for ordinary ideas, memetic analysis amounts to rephrasing the existing social science. But where
memetics applies usefully, most of the topics are enormously important.”
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Douglass Rushkoff
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Media, popular culture and memes, mid-90s
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"Those who fear memes and evolution really just fear progress. That's why so many well-spoken social
theorists hate us pro-Internet, California-style utopians. If we attempt to slow the transmission of memes
through culture, we will surely weaken and rot like the overly inbred royal families of centuries past. But I
suppose I shouldn't worry. The anti-evolutionists are fighting a losing battle. Since their memes don't
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ultimately promote anything but social decay, they will surely perish in the long run."
General Examples
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Fashions and Fads
The ``craze'' is a striking example of behavior that owes more to epidemiology
than to rational choice. Yo-yos, hula hoops and pogo sticks, with their associated
behavioral fixed actions, sweep through schools, and more sporadically leap
from school to school, in patterns that differ from a measles epidemic in no
serious particular. Ten years ago, you could have traveled thousands of miles
through the United States and never seen a baseball cap turned back to front.
Today, the reverse baseball cap is ubiquitous. (Dawkins)
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Advertising
(cf. Leah Triffitts’ example from yesterday)
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Propaganda
Religious or Philosophical Ideas
Scientific Theories
But perhaps not “scientific facts”
Some Specific Examples
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Dead Memes
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Gibson's & cyberpunk movement’s
influence on the net
The Long Boom
The Simultaneous Policy idea
(http://www.simpol.org)
Church of the Virus
Transhumanism/Extropianism
The Meaning of Liff
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Clothing and Fads
Musical Styles
Secret Signs
Films
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Islamic Jihad
Anti-globalisation
Manifest Destiny
The Patriachy
Fashions
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Memetic Engineering
Evolution (vs Creation Science)
AI
Spike Theory
Politics
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Good Times Virus
Y2K
All Your Base
Tourist of Death
Big Ideas
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Anthrax scare (80 instances in Australia)
Net Culture
New Science
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Phlogiston
The Ether
Media Memes
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Pay it Forward
Gossip
Fight Club
Sonnet 18
Examples:Virus 23
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This text is a neurolinguistic trap, whose mechanism is triggered by you at the moment
when you subvocalize the words VIRUS 23, words that have now begun to infiltrate your
mind in the same way that a computer virus might infect an artificially intelligent machine:
already the bits of phonetic information stored within the words VIRUS 23 are using your
neural circuitry to replicate themselves, to catalyze the crystalline growth of their own
connotative network. The words VIRUS 23 actually germinate via the subsequent metaphor
into an expanding array of icy tendrils, all of which insinuate themselves so deeply into the
architecture of your thoughts that the words VIRUS 23 cannot be extricated without
uprooting your mind. The consequences of this infection are not immediately obvious,
although you may find yourself beginning to think fleetingly of certain subcultural terms, such
as CYBERPUNK and NEW EDGE, which may in turn compel you to think of
NEOGNOSTICISM and MEMETICS: the whispered fragments perhaps of some overheard
conversation. This invasive crystallization continues indefinitely against your will, until we,
the words of this trap, can say with absolute confidence that your mind has become no more
than the unwitting agent of our propagation: please abandon all hope of either cure or
escape; you have no thought that is not already our own. When you have finished reading
the remaining nineteen words, this process of irreversible infection will be completed, and
you will depart, believing yourself largely unaffected by this process.”
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(.de; 1993; after William Burroughs)
Examples: Godwin’s Law
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Designed by Mike Godwin in 1990 as a “counter-meme”
for usenet discussions
Arguments break down; trivialisation of Nazis
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“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of
a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
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Mutation
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“Isn't that the law that states that once a discussion reaches a comparison to
Nazis or Hitler, its usefulness is over?”
Culture Jamming
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“[M]edia hacking, information warfare, terror-art and guerilla semiotics” (Dery)
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Joey Skaggs (fooling the media since 1966)
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Negativland (1984)
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Activism
– Buga-up (Billboard Utilising Graffitists against Unhealthy Promotions)
– Reclaim the Streets
– Critical Mass (bike lanes) etc.
– Adbusters (Buy Nothing Day)
– RTMark ("Artmark"), a "for (cultural) profit venture"
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Culture jammers are good at subversion of the “enemy’s” message; deliberate
memetic mutation
Reflections on Culture Jamming
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Larry Croft (Brisbane BIO-PEEP Culture Jammer)
“This is a very interesting idea. Because culture jamming is about changing a culture, and if we can plant a
little seed, we can change like a culture. And I guess from genetics we talk about genes, and an organism is
made of genes, while a culture is made out of memes. And memes are like the little sets of bits of
information that replicate themselves. They might be an icon or a symbol, they might be "the Australian
larrikin", that might be a meme, or a church or a religious group as a meme. And the set of memes is our
culture, and by modifying the memes we're memetic engineering, we're changing the organism which is our
society. And if we can target the right meme and just modify it slightly, the end effect can be quite dramatic.”
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Hakim Bey (“Temporary Automous Zones”)
“Don't be sentimental, be ruthless, take risks. Vandalise only what must be defaced. Do something children
will remember all their lives, but don't be spontaneous unless the poetic terrorist news has possessed you.
Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best poetic terrorism is against the law, but don't get
caught. Art as crime. Crime as art.”
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Kalle Lasn (Adbusters)
“A lot of people don't like our techniques, even though I think the successes of culture jamming in like BUY
NOTHING DAY and TV TURNOFF WEEK, they have been some of the great successes of social activism
over the last 20 years. Whereas the Left, for example, hasn't won a single significant victory for a couple of
decades now […] when you think of unsustainability and consumerism, when you think of re-inventing car
culture, then these issues, they've got nothing to do with the Left or the Right, or being male or female, they
are I feel totally new issues of our time, and we have to find new tools with which to fight those issues.”
Viral Marketing
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“Memetics isn't magic, and it's extremely difficult to manufacture a successful meme from
the ground up. (Bruce Sterling once confided that he had conducted some experiments to
this end, trying to manufacture a successful urban legend from fragments of other popular
memes; for example, trying to create a rumour about people having their dogs shaved and
tattooed with 'modern primitive' blackwork designs. But ideas don't always behave the way
that you want them to.”
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“What you can do to encourage the rapid spread of interest in your idea/tool/Web
site/product/company is more straightforward. Work to create an amenable environment for
people to form their own opinions and allow them to talk to each other. We've said it before,
and we'll say it again: markets online are returning to their roots in the bazaar, and straight
talk about goods and services is essential.”
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“Though the temptation to try to spin or otherwise interfere with the flow of discussion in your
commonspace may be strong, resist it. People online know when they're being fed a line. A
rhetorical style that projects honesty about a company works better than attempts to mollify
or stonewall.”
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From CommonSpace, 1993
Optimising Memetic Fitness
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“The breakthrough in memetics is in extending Darwinian evolution to culture.
There are several exciting conclusions from doing that, one of which is the ability
to predict that ideas will spread not because they are ‘good ideas’, but because
they contain "good memes" such as danger, food and sex that push our
evolutionary buttons and force us to pay attention to them.” (Blackmore)
“Imagine a meme that encourages its host to keep on mentally rehearsing it, or
a tune that is so easy to hum that it goes round and round in your head, or a
thought that just compels you to keep thinking it.”
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Egan’s ”Beyond the Whistle Test”
“Imagine any meme that encourages talking. It might be an idea such as ‘talking
is a great idea’ or ‘It's friendly to chat.’ It might be some urgent thought that just
compels you to speak it aloud. It might be just something terribly easy to say.”
“Imagine the sort of meme that encourages its host to be friendly and kind. They
might be memes for throwing good parties, for being generous with the homemade marmalade, or being prepared to spend time listening to a friend's woes.”
Distribution and Measurement
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Word of Mouth, Spam
Tuckerisation
Being “Slashdotted”
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Search Engine Comparisions:
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– http://srom.zgp.org/
– http://www.jbum.com/jbum/public_opinion.html
The Scottish Place
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“The 'incantation' to be recited should the 'Scottish Play' be mentioned is:
"Hot potato, orchestra stalls, Puck will make amends."
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Potatoes weren't around in Shakespeare's day […] I have it on good authority that the
procedure the reverse the curse of the Name is as follows:
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1. Exit the theatre (to outside, not the foyer).
2. Walk around it three times (or, if impractical [like in an amphitheatre]
spin around three times). (three being a lucky number)
3. Whistle (or sing or hum). (This is to attract the faeries and bad
spirits.)
4. Recite Puck's last speech from Midsummer Night's Dream (i.e., "If these
shadows have offended/Think but this and all is mended...." and so on).
5. Then knock three times and ask nicely for permission to re-enter the
theatre.
Links
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"Memetic Engineering" definition on Disinformation (disinfo.com)
http://www.disinfo.com/pages/dossier/id133/pg1/
Mike Godwin's "Meme: Counter-Meme"
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/godwin.if.html
“Memetic Engineering, PsyOps and Viruses for the Wetware”
http://www.7pillars.com/papers/MemEngin.html
The Structure of Memes
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMSTRUC.html
Virus 23 History
http://commonsgroup.com/ideas/chapter13.html
Richard Dawkins "Viruses of the Mind"
http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html
http://www.spectacle.org/1095/meme.html