In the "On Human-centered design" thread, Fernando Galdino brought up "meme theory." Can anyone tell me why thinking about memes is useful?
> On Jul 20, 2018, at 7:22 AM, Fernando Galdino <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> The ideas of Susan Blackmore (her Ted Talk might help to get it in short)
> <https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes>, fit this
> point of view and illustrate something bigger - where Don's observations
> are more a symptom than an illness.
>
> In sum: The technology we are creating is another evolutionary force and
> might not care so much about what humans think about it. It just use us to
> multiply / perpetuate itself.
For anyone unfamiliar with the idea of memes, Richard Dawkins tried applying his neo Darwinism to other areas and posited the possibility of a "meme"--the cultural analog to the gene. The idea of cultural evolution was common in 1976 when the book 'The Selfish Gene' came out. Cultural evolution as commonly thought of seemed to many to be purposeful; it was a march of progress, a demonstration of the survival of the fittest.
Just as Dawkins moved evolutionary beliefs to a more mechanistic model, so he suggested that the cultural world might (must?) work the same way. (There seems to be as much ego as thought involved in Dawkins' on-and-off promotion of meme theory. Dawkins claims that “Darwinism is too big a theory to be confined to the narrow context of the gene.”)
Although there are others, Daniel Dennett, Dawkins, and Susan Blackmore have been the big promoters of the meme meme. Daniel Dennett wrote: “Meme evolution is not just analogous to biological or genic evolution, according to Dawkins. It is not just a process that can be metaphorically described in these evolutionary idioms, but a phenomenon that obeys the laws of natural selection quite exactly.”
In her TED talk, Blackmore said “A meme is not equivalent to an idea. It's not an idea. It's not equivalent to anything else, really. Stick with the definition. It’s that which is imitated, or information which is copied from person to person.”
I won't waste everyone's time with my objections to Blackmore's thinking generally. Let's assume for a moment that meme are the explanation she claims. What do we do with that? How does the idea move us forward?
If genes are the smallest bits of DNA that can be copied and then do something, what are the smallest cultural bits?
How do these bits replicate?
If a gene can be either expressed or dormant, does the same exist in memetic evolution?
How can we tell the difference between dormant memes and extinct memes?
Gene choices for expression are limited by having two parents supplying the replicators; how many parents do memes have and what does that mean about the way they can combine?
If genes are combined in an orderly and probabilistic manner, generally fitting in one place on a chromosome, what (if anything) is the analog to that for memes?
If a gene moves to a new position can express itself in an entirely different function, what is the memetic version. . . ?
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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