Memetic engineering
Encyclopedia
Memetic engineering is a term developed and coined by Leveious Rolando, John Sokol, and Gibran Burchett while they researched and observed the behavior of people after being purposely exposed (knowingly and unknowingly) to certain memetic themes. The term is based on Richard Dawkins
' theory of memes.
" are memes incorporating several other memes, some of which have positive connotations in societies that reject racism. According to the theory Memetic Engineering is, simply put, the analysis of an individual or individual's behavior, the selection of specific memes and the distribution or propagation of those memes with the intent of altering the behavior of others. A memetic engineer doesn't particularly have to consciously make the decision to alter another individuals behavior. It can happen unconsciously when specific behavior is observed, transmitted and then replicated within the observer. The process of creating and developing theories or ideologies based on an analytical study of societies, cultures, their ways of thinking and the evolution of their minds. Memes themselves are neither good nor bad. For example Race is an ideology that is made up of several memes. When a Meme is introduced, those concepts begin to take on their own process of evolution based on the person who adopts the ideology, internalizes it, and reintroduces it into society causing it to spread like a virus
.
According to the above theory, typical memetic engineers include scientists
, engineers
, industrial design
ers, ad-men
, art
ists, publicist
s, political activists
, and religious missionaries
.
Dawkins agrees that much of theology
and other theoretical aspects of religion
can be viewed as the careful, even worshipful, handling of extremely powerful memeplexes with very odd or difficult traits.
, semiotics
, culture jamming
, military information warfare
, and the viral texts of iconoclasts
William S. Burroughs
, J.G. Ballard, and Genesis P-Orridge
. It draws upon Third Culture
sciences and conceptual worldviews for Social Engineering, Values Systems Alignment, and Culture Jamming purposes. An important example of macro-historical
memetic engineering analysis explaining how domination
, patriarchy
, war
and violence
are culturally programmed is Riane Eisler
's The Chalice and the Blade (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1988), which outlines her Dominator and Partnership Culture thesis. The savvy memetic engineer is able to isolate, study, and subtly manipulate the underlying values systems, symbolic balance and primal atavism
s that unconsciously influence the individual psyche
and collective identity
. A highly educated but susceptible intelligentsia
, worldwide travel, and information vectors like the Internet
, cable television
, and tabloid
media, means that hysterical epidemics and disinformation campaigns may become more common. This warfare will be conducted using aesthetics
, symbols, and doctrines as camouflage
that will ultimately influence our cultural meme pool. These contemporary life conditions (Historic Times; Geographic Place; Existential Problems; and Societal Circumstances) are explored in books like Carl Sagan
's The Demon Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), John Brockman
's The Third Culture
: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (New York: Touchstone Books, 1996), and Michael Shermer
's Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudo-science, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: W.H. Freeman & Co, 1996). Fictional descriptions of memetic engineering include Isaac Asimov
's seminal Foundation Trilogy (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), George Gurdjieff's artificial mythology Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson
(New York: Penguin USA, 1999); Neil Stephenson's novels Snow Crash
(New York: Bantam Spectra, 1993) and The Diamond Age
(New York: Bantam Spectra, 1996); and Robert W. Chambers
' unearthly The King in Yellow
(Buccaneer Books, 1996) tome, which influenced seminal horror author H. P. Lovecraft
.
and combat terrorism
as explained below in From the Clash to the Confluence of Civilizations by Thomas P.M. Barnett an American military geostrategist, the Pentagon
and Richard J. Pech's Inhibiting Imitative Terrorism Through Memetic Engineering.
Other examples of applied memetic engineering are present but not exclusive to the marketing
and advertising
industries. The question is whether these individuals can be truly considered memetic engineers. Marketing and advertising professionals create memes on an ongoing basis however, this alone doesn't necessarily qualify them as being memetic engineers. Few if any actually fall into this category. This is possibly due to a lack of understanding of the various memes that have taken root in their target audience minds. According to the definition, industrial designers, music artist, athletes and other entertainers would more likely better serve this definition. This is because of their ability to create products, phrases and ideas that disseminate the population triggering a response within the brain causing a cultural phenomena.
Game theory
provides an empirical
means of advancing the science of memetics. Memetic game theory, attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations; where an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others, based on past experiences, emotional behavior and learned behavior. It also offers a scientific approach to analyzing social interactions.
According to G.Burchett and his research from G. Edward Griffin's book The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, the concept of currency
or money is considered a meme developed by early bankers. Here we have an example of a meme that was created to better serve the economic foundation of a society. This is a positive example of memetic engineering. However once the meme of legal tender was created it forced individuals to accept and use the currency under the guise of law. Once an individual is forced to accept currency by the government, essentially the government now controls the means of that individual's survival. In the case of the United States legal tender; the economic control of the citizens was placed in hands of the Federal Reserve which is a private entity.
, a meme which propagates on mail-lists, and which its author professes to have initiated to reduce spam on those lists; one version is "When someone posts a metaphor about Nazis the thread is no longer useful."
Richard Pech discusses the concept of memetic engineering within the context of countering mind contagions associated with terrorism
. School shootings, for example, may be explained as an attempt to demonstrate the ultimate form of rebellion
against a system in which the perpetrators feel ostracised or isolated. Acts of violence might appeal to their egos and the means for achieving this is replicated via the shooting meme. To re-engineer such a meme and its ability to infest susceptible minds, all information concerning such violence must be portrayed in an unappealing manner. For example, no one wants to be associated with acts of cowardice
. By strongly suggesting that such violence is cowardly and the work of disturbed minds, it has less appeal for replication. In this manner the shooting meme has been re-engineered by removing its attraction, and therefore removing its ability to replicate.
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
' theory of memes.
- The process of developing memes, through meme-splicing and memetic synthesis, with the intent of altering the behavior of others in society or humanity.
- The process of creating and developing theories or ideologies based on an analytical study of societies, cultures, their ways of thinking and the evolution of their minds.
- The process of modifying human beliefs, thought patterns, etc.
Definition
According to the theory, the effect a meme has on society is based on the application of the meme after understanding the qualities essential to the meme. For example, Rolando, Burchett and Sokol expand on their concept and explain that "Race" and "RacismRacism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
" are memes incorporating several other memes, some of which have positive connotations in societies that reject racism. According to the theory Memetic Engineering is, simply put, the analysis of an individual or individual's behavior, the selection of specific memes and the distribution or propagation of those memes with the intent of altering the behavior of others. A memetic engineer doesn't particularly have to consciously make the decision to alter another individuals behavior. It can happen unconsciously when specific behavior is observed, transmitted and then replicated within the observer. The process of creating and developing theories or ideologies based on an analytical study of societies, cultures, their ways of thinking and the evolution of their minds. Memes themselves are neither good nor bad. For example Race is an ideology that is made up of several memes. When a Meme is introduced, those concepts begin to take on their own process of evolution based on the person who adopts the ideology, internalizes it, and reintroduces it into society causing it to spread like a virus
Virus
A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...
.
According to the above theory, typical memetic engineers include scientists
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, engineers
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
, industrial design
Industrial design
Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
ers, ad-men
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
ists, publicist
Publicity
Publicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public's perception of a subject. The subjects of publicity include people , goods and services, organizations of all kinds, and works of art or entertainment.From a marketing perspective, publicity is one component of promotion which is one...
s, political activists
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, and religious missionaries
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
.
Dawkins agrees that much of theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
and other theoretical aspects of religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
can be viewed as the careful, even worshipful, handling of extremely powerful memeplexes with very odd or difficult traits.
Origins of memetic engineering
Memetic Engineering developed from diverse influences, including cutting-edge physics of consciousness and memetics research, chaos theoryChaos theory
Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...
, semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
, culture jamming
Culture jamming
Culture jamming, coined in 1984, denotes a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. Guerrilla semiotics and night discourse are sometimes used synonymously with the term culture jamming.Culture...
, military information warfare
Information warfare
The term Information Warfare is primarily an American concept involving the use and management of information technology in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent...
, and the viral texts of iconoclasts
Iconoclasm
Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major political or religious changes...
William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
, J.G. Ballard, and Genesis P-Orridge
Genesis P-Orridge
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is an English singer-songwriter, musician, writer and artist. P-Orridge's early confrontational performance work in COUM Transmissions in the late 1960s and early 1970s along with the industrial band Throbbing Gristle, which dealt with subjects such as prostitution,...
. It draws upon Third Culture
Third culture
Third culture can refer to:* Third Culture Kid, a term for children who have lived a significant portion of their lives in a country that is not their passport country.* The Third Culture, a book by John Brockman....
sciences and conceptual worldviews for Social Engineering, Values Systems Alignment, and Culture Jamming purposes. An important example of macro-historical
Macro-historical
Macro-historical analysis seeks out large, long-term trends in world history, searching for ultimate patterns through a comparison of proximate details. For example, a macro-historical study might examine Japanese feudalism and European feudalism in order to decide whether feudal structures are an...
memetic engineering analysis explaining how domination
Domination
-Books:* The Domination, an alternate history / science-fiction / alternate reality fictional, by S. M. Stirling.-Music:* Dominant , a diatonic scale step and diatonic function in tonal music theory...
, patriarchy
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
, war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
and violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
are culturally programmed is Riane Eisler
Riane Eisler
Riane Tennenhaus Eisler is an Austrian-born American scholar, writer, and social activist. Born in Vienna ca. 1937, her familyfled from the Nazis to Cuba when she was a child; she later emigrated to the United States. She has degrees in...
's The Chalice and the Blade (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1988), which outlines her Dominator and Partnership Culture thesis. The savvy memetic engineer is able to isolate, study, and subtly manipulate the underlying values systems, symbolic balance and primal atavism
Atavism
Atavism is the tendency to revert to ancestral type. In biology, an atavism is an evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations before. Atavisms can occur in several ways...
s that unconsciously influence the individual psyche
Psyche (psychology)
The word psyche has a long history of use in psychology and philosophy, dating back to ancient times, and has been one of the fundamental concepts for understanding human nature from a scientific point of view. The English word soul is sometimes used synonymously, especially in older...
and collective identity
Collective identity
The term collective identity may refer to a variety of concepts. In general however, these concepts generally pertain to phenomena where an individuals' perceived membership in a social group impacts upon their own identity in some way. The idea of a collective identity has received attention in a...
. A highly educated but susceptible intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
, worldwide travel, and information vectors like the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
, and tabloid
Tabloid journalism
Tabloid journalism tends to emphasize topics such as sensational crime stories, astrology, gossip columns about the personal lives of celebrities and sports stars, and junk food news...
media, means that hysterical epidemics and disinformation campaigns may become more common. This warfare will be conducted using aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, symbols, and doctrines as camouflage
Camouflage
Camouflage is a method of concealment that allows an otherwise visible animal, military vehicle, or other object to remain unnoticed, by blending with its environment. Examples include a leopard's spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier and a leaf-mimic butterfly...
that will ultimately influence our cultural meme pool. These contemporary life conditions (Historic Times; Geographic Place; Existential Problems; and Societal Circumstances) are explored in books like Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
's The Demon Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), John Brockman
John Brockman (literary agent)
John Brockman is a literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. He founded the Edge Foundation, an organization aimed to bring together people working at the edge of a broad range of scientific and technical fields. Referencing C.P...
's The Third Culture
The Third Culture
The Third Culture is a book by John Brockman which discusses the work of several well-known scientists who are directly communicating their new, sometimes provocative, ideas to the general public...
: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (New York: Touchstone Books, 1996), and Michael Shermer
Michael Shermer
Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members...
's Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudo-science, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: W.H. Freeman & Co, 1996). Fictional descriptions of memetic engineering include Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
's seminal Foundation Trilogy (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), George Gurdjieff's artificial mythology Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson
Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson or An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man is the first volume of the All and Everything trilogy written by the Greek-Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff...
(New York: Penguin USA, 1999); Neil Stephenson's novels Snow Crash
Snow Crash
Snow Crash is Neal Stephenson's third novel, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's other novels it covers history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy....
(New York: Bantam Spectra, 1993) and The Diamond Age
The Diamond Age
The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. It is to some extent a science fiction bildungsroman, focused on a young girl named Nell, and set in a future world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. The novel deals with themes of...
(New York: Bantam Spectra, 1996); and Robert W. Chambers
Robert W. Chambers
Robert William Chambers was an American artist and writer.-Biography:He was born in Brooklyn, New York, to William P. Chambers , a famous lawyer, and Caroline Chambers , a direct descendant of Roger Williams, the founder of Providence, Rhode Island...
' unearthly The King in Yellow
The King in Yellow
The King in Yellow is a collection of short stories written by Robert W. Chambers and published in 1895. The stories could be categorized as early horror fiction or Victorian Gothic fiction, but the work also touches on mythology, fantasy, mystery, science fiction and romance...
(Buccaneer Books, 1996) tome, which influenced seminal horror author H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
.
Applied memetic engineering
Memetic engineering as a social science lends examples of itself in multiple areas and disciplines. It is currently being examined and researched by the US military as a means to counter insurgencyCounter insurgency
A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency involves actions taken by the recognized government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it...
and combat terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
as explained below in From the Clash to the Confluence of Civilizations by Thomas P.M. Barnett an American military geostrategist, the Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
and Richard J. Pech's Inhibiting Imitative Terrorism Through Memetic Engineering.
Other examples of applied memetic engineering are present but not exclusive to the marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
and advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
industries. The question is whether these individuals can be truly considered memetic engineers. Marketing and advertising professionals create memes on an ongoing basis however, this alone doesn't necessarily qualify them as being memetic engineers. Few if any actually fall into this category. This is possibly due to a lack of understanding of the various memes that have taken root in their target audience minds. According to the definition, industrial designers, music artist, athletes and other entertainers would more likely better serve this definition. This is because of their ability to create products, phrases and ideas that disseminate the population triggering a response within the brain causing a cultural phenomena.
Game theory
Game theory
Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...
provides an empirical
Empirical
The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....
means of advancing the science of memetics. Memetic game theory, attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations; where an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others, based on past experiences, emotional behavior and learned behavior. It also offers a scientific approach to analyzing social interactions.
According to G.Burchett and his research from G. Edward Griffin's book The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, the concept of currency
Currency
In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...
or money is considered a meme developed by early bankers. Here we have an example of a meme that was created to better serve the economic foundation of a society. This is a positive example of memetic engineering. However once the meme of legal tender was created it forced individuals to accept and use the currency under the guise of law. Once an individual is forced to accept currency by the government, essentially the government now controls the means of that individual's survival. In the case of the United States legal tender; the economic control of the citizens was placed in hands of the Federal Reserve which is a private entity.
Examples
An example of an engineered meme is Godwin's LawGodwin's Law
Godwin's law is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990 that has become an Internet adage...
, a meme which propagates on mail-lists, and which its author professes to have initiated to reduce spam on those lists; one version is "When someone posts a metaphor about Nazis the thread is no longer useful."
Richard Pech discusses the concept of memetic engineering within the context of countering mind contagions associated with terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
. School shootings, for example, may be explained as an attempt to demonstrate the ultimate form of rebellion
Rebellion
Rebellion, uprising or insurrection, is a refusal of obedience or order. It may, therefore, be seen as encompassing a range of behaviors aimed at destroying or replacing an established authority such as a government or a head of state...
against a system in which the perpetrators feel ostracised or isolated. Acts of violence might appeal to their egos and the means for achieving this is replicated via the shooting meme. To re-engineer such a meme and its ability to infest susceptible minds, all information concerning such violence must be portrayed in an unappealing manner. For example, no one wants to be associated with acts of cowardice
Cowardice
Cowardice is the perceived failure to demonstrate sufficient mental robustness and courage in the face of a challenge. Under many military codes of justice, cowardice in the face of combat is a crime punishable by death...
. By strongly suggesting that such violence is cowardly and the work of disturbed minds, it has less appeal for replication. In this manner the shooting meme has been re-engineered by removing its attraction, and therefore removing its ability to replicate.
See also
- Opinion leader
- PropagandaPropagandaPropaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
- Diffusion of innovationsDiffusion of innovationsDiffusion of Innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures. Everett Rogers, a professor of rural sociology, popularized the theory in his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations...
- Self-replicationSelf-replicationSelf-replication is any behavior of a dynamical system that yields construction of an identical copy of that dynamical system. Biological cells, given suitable environments, reproduce by cell division. During cell division, DNA is replicated and can be transmitted to offspring during reproduction...
- MemeMemeA meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...
- MemeticsMemeticsMemetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It purports to be an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. A meme, analogous to a gene, is essentially a "unit of...
- Collective consciousnessCollective consciousnessCollective consciousness was a term coined by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim to refer to the shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society...
- InfornographyInfornographyInfornography is a portmanteau word formed by the combination of the words "information" and "pornography". Infornography is used to define an addiction to or an obsession with acquiring, manipulating, and sharing information...
- EgregoreEgregoreEgregore is an occult concept representing a "thoughtform" or "collective group mind", an autonomous psychic entity made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of a group of people...
External links
- DisinfoDisinfoThe Disinformation Company is a privately held, limited American publishing company that focuses in current affairs titles and seeks to expose disinformation. It is headquartered in New York City, New York...
- Alex Burns: Memetic Engineering (2001) - Wired Magazine - J. Gardner: Memetic Engineering (1996)
- Wired Magazine - M. Godwin: Meme, Counter-meme (1994)