With this reasonable comparison in mind, Barr turns toward the concept of the meme. Within the mind, the concept of competing ideas cannot be true. It is merely a mixed-metaphor brought over to psychology from Darwinian concepts of biological evolution. He says:

…The common sense notion that ideas are selected by some obscure competition between objective alternatives … finds an equal bridge to selectionist principles that are derived from biology. Thus, just as Newtonian physics and common sense physics seem to confirm each other, common sense psychology and Darwinian biology share similar metaphorical principles that explain respectively how behavioral and biological selections are made.

Barr mainly argues that ideas are selected by competition and thereby misses the definition of the meme. The key thing that Richard Dawkins was arguing when he introduced the concept of the meme was the more general concept of the replicator. At the time of his writing of The Selfish Gene [Amazon link] Dawkins was attempting to find natural, basic constructs in nature that could replicate themselves — and do little else. He pointed to genes but he also pointed to viruses, computer viruses, and prions. As an aside he argued that ideas may have some capacity to replicate themselves from individual to individual, but he was not arguing that human behavior could be described by an individual mind’s competition of ideas.

And here’s where it gets tricky. Yes, meme’s can be passed from individual to individual competitively through the use of media (language, music, speech, etc.) and although they can influence behavior, they are not the only thing that does. To understand the concept of the meme it is crucial not to confuse it with perception (such as the color blue or the feeling of cold) or even information. It is a kind of data and a kind of data based on a experiential context.

A meme exists as an extension of our ability to utilize media to communicate with one another and ourselves.¹ Without media (including “natural” media such as speech) there are no memes. Perception and information come from reality and in the desert of the real our connections are our own. It is only in the shared light of media that human consciousness begins to create, trade and disseminate memes.

I have often said that what is funny is that which is wrong. A man slipping on a banana peel. That’s not a duck it’s my brother. Did Paris Hilton just fall in to a vat of… whatever. You get the idea. The joke is the meme. The tune is the meme. The fashion is the meme. The graphic is the meme. The perceptions that come before it are not memes and no more unique to our consciouness than they are to dogs and monkeys. Flat, far, and cold are not memes. But how flat, far, and cold have to do with our ex-wives is definitely a meme.

The most important embodiment of a meme is its symbolic notation. It is not that the meme exists outside of the evironment of the individual mind but rather that the meme within the mind is formed when new connections between older memes or perceptions are created through the feedback loop that is the act of observing media. Although memes do not carry the weight of information or value, they can create value within the human mind.

To touch on Barr’s point once more, meme’s are not responible for your behavior, but they may influence it. Barr seems to place memes on a higher level than necessary. Fear is not a meme. It is an instinct, something received through a mechanism other than media (natural or nurtured). I would not posit that memes could possess information nor transmit it. I would however posit that there is a meme in the connection between sex, cold, blue and Sunday morning. And there is most certainly a meme in the ability of an author to choose the words “sultry sullen Sunday” and create within our mind (if the prerequisite experiences are available to us) a new connection between perceptions — a connection you may not have possessed or imagined.

I will finish with Barr’s statement of this:

Thus, we select not only memes, but also the abstract relationships between memes as they are moderated by our thoughts and overt behavior.

But memes are the reverse of this. They are in fact the abstract relationship itself. And sometimes it is that abstract relationship, such as love, that can very much be a driving factor in our behavior.

The media has accomplished this feat with the help of an evolutionary force known as the meme.  The meme is a concept originally created by Richard Dawkins as a theoretical example of a replicator and a unit of evolutionary cultural transmission.  A replicator, in some sense, is Nature's most basic form of life.  In fact, even referring to a replicator as life is a stretch.  They are exactly what they sounds like: something that can copy itself.  Genes are replicators, as well as viruses and prions (infectious proteins).  Like genes, memes copy themselves and migrate from environment to environment and possess the qualities of copy fidelity, fecundity and longevity. [1] All that will be covered in greater detail because there is much more to it than that.  Very little yet is understood about memes, but as we will see here, it is clear that their force that can be monitored and measured and that they have a serious influence over the human mind. 

Specifically, they have an incredible influence on the neocortex of the human mind, the portion of the brain that allows for our ability to abstract and gives us perceptual recall over time. [2]  We have a relational capacity that creates a mental environment in which perceptions can be compared and combined, situations can be sussed out in advance or contemplated after their occurrence. [3] That particular talent is shared with many species and many, as we shall see, are also capable of being influenced by memes.  However, our unique ability to create artifacts within the physical world, or media, have given memes greater channels by which to migrate from mind to mind. It is this aspect, this parallel evolution of our tool use adaptation and memes can explain the incredibly rapid advancement we have seen in human culture in the last 10,000 years.  It is this parallel evolution that has created all of our technology and given us more control over our environment than any species before us.

Symbiotically with the genetic adaptation of tool use, abstractions within the homo sapiens mind have been allowed to enter the physical realm.  These artifacts are what we refer to as media (though most of us just mean the television by that phrase). [4]  What media really are is extensions of mankind's physicality.  Marshall McLuhan championed this idea in the 70s as well.  He easily saw media as a bridge between the mind and reality but in an overarching fashion and not in a memetic sense.  And although his observations were exacting, he did not present an underlying theory as to how media gained its influence over us.

Through media (speech, writing, pictures, etc.) memes migrate from one environment to another, each of these environments being an individual human mind.  That is to say, it is not the original meme that actually migrates, but that a copy of the original meme emerges in the new mind and constructed of that minds' perceptions.  If the perceptions (and other memes) present in the new mind cannot support the copy then it will not exist.

It is critical to note that the existence of the meme in the new mind has nothing to do with a subjective critique of the idea but rather with the fitness of the meme.  Everyone has had a song stuck in their head, repeating over and over and they may even despise the song.  Here again, the meme for the song is based on certain already present features of the mind, such as an understanding of patterns in Western music in this case.  If the media were transmitting an ancient aboriginal folk song that had no similar cadence, no similar pattern, it may not be perceived as music at all, but rather noise, and the creation of a new meme would not occur.  In this sense modern media can be seen as a spore-like explosion of memes attempting to migrate through an artifactual network to as many various environments as possible and the best memes, those with the greatest fitness spread.

It is this complete lack of a subjective critique that can make memes so dangerous.  Some memes are, in fact, life threatening. For instance, imitating the behavior of Wile E. Coyote can be bad for you. In the case of memes such as this the mind's other parts (such as instinctual behaviors of protection or self-preservation located in the Medulla Oblongata) can be entirely overrided.  The instinct to reproduce can be overrided.  And I would argue that the instinct to preserve our natural habitat, an instinct that can be shown that all mammals possess, can also be overridden and has been overridden to a dangerous degree.

When Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message" he meant that often what the media is doing to our culture is not in the message carried by the media.  The media don't deliver memes to you -- there are no memes outside minds.  But the media deliver the perceptions necessary to form a new copy of a meme.  The chaos of media surrounding us today allows for a total expansion  of meme replication in the interest of memes as opposed to in the interest of humans.

[1] Dawkins, Richard. “The Selfish Gene” 1976

[2] Hawkins, Jeff. “On Intelligence” 2005

[3] Experiements have shown that a rat (a mammal with a neocortex) can travel through a maze by memory after having solved it once. A lizard, with no neocortex, cannot accomplish this feat ever.

[4] McLuhan, Marshall. “Understanding Media” 1964 — McLuhan referred to everything from the alphabet to money to the wheel to television as media because they were all physical extensions of the human mind. They all also are not possible without our genetic adaptation to use tools and our capacity to utilize memes.

A potential requirement for the status of meme would seem to be that it is a concept that is not innate but based on some notion of imitation. While vocabulary concerning temperature might have to be taught and the word “cold”[1] a meme in itself it is certainly clear that the concept of cold (without verbalization) is not something that needs to be taught. A better example is Impressionism because it is not a simple symbol that represents a simple concept. In fact, to understand Impressionism it is clearly important to also be able to understand art and a little bit of art history. And there are a myriad of levels on which one could understand something like Impressionism. The best description of the technique I could give (not being much of a student of art history) would be that “it’s a little bit fuzzy”. However, a deeper understanding of Impressionism could lead to descriptions of brushes, techniques and a far more elegant understanding. If Impressionism as a meme is (as it has to be) reliant on the existence of other memes, what are the basic memes necessary for understanding it?

I only intend to start this basic line of questioning in this particular entry in order to point out what is to me an interesting similarity here to information theory. If there can be considered to be a basic requirement for a meme, and hence a way of reducing complex memes, then is there a way to relate it to a basic unit of information? According to information theory we can suppose a basic unit of information to be “yes” or “no” (represented as 1 or 0 for computers or ‘on” or “off”). Information doesn’t discern between what is true and what is false, it merely provides a groundwork for an individual to make a choice. In other words, if I have something behind my back and ask you to guess what it is, you might ask “Is it bread?” Whatever answer I give you reduces the current possibilities and is therefore information, true or false. You will make a decision (in this case a guess) based on the information and uncertainty will be reduced. In some sense, then, information is empty — it is what it is and isn’t by definition tied to any concepts. Tying memes to information theory, at first glance, offers an opportunity to examine efficiency of communication. I could describe to you “a period in art history where a school of thought existed in which artists painted an impression that they received…” etc. or I could say “Impressionism”. One clearly seems more efficient and the more efficient communication is based on a more complex meme.

That potentially frames the meme as a unit of information compression. And the ones and zeros of the matter don’t at all need to be as concrete as ones and zeros, but rather those most basic perceptions handed over to the brain by our sensory organs. Within this construction one could see why it is reasonable for a blind man to possess certain complex memes that relate through senses other than sight but would find it difficult to discuss any matter of Impressionism. Even for someone who doesn’t entirely understand the complexities of Impressionism, they know that it revolves around their sight (and likely what Impressionistic works they’ve viewed).

The difference between a perception and a meme, the actual line, is still not all that clear, but one clear delineation appears to exist in that perceptions are atomic — incapable of being broken down. Memes on the other hand not only appear to be capable of being compressed but compression seems to be a natural way to track their formation. I think, upon further exploration, that the compression of memes is tantamount to their evolution. Information in this form had gradually reduced it byte-size in order to take advantage of the limited capacity of the human mind’s ability to retain information as information in the environment has increased dramatically over the course of human civilization.

[1] The word cold can be thought of as both the concept and the construct that defines it. An easier way to relate this would be to use a heiroglyph — say a blue octogon — that could just as easily represent the concept cold. Without having been taught the meaning, or inferred it through experience, the symbol is meaningless. The symbol in itself then is a representation of a concept.

Some memes, on the other hand, seem capable of transmitting a concept with only vague perceptual references. WWII is a meme (and a dense one). I was in no way involved with World War II but I definitely have a set of perceptions (many of them likely fictional) that revolve around that particular meme. I also have an entire set of memes that are inherited to the meme of WWII — memes like German, soldier, guns, planes, war. Here again, a meme such as soldier is not so much one perception that exists in my mind but rather an amalgamation, a pattern of perceptions. I’ve seen lots of soldiers and when shown one that I’ve never seen before I will likely be able to categorize him/her correctly.[1]

I don’t think this is at all damaging to the model of the meme — in that it is not necessarily simple in its construction. When we think of certain memes like a song or a fad, at least part of the attraction to the memetic model is the simplicity of examples such as this. But consider this: you can possess a meme for which you have no reference. In this sense a kind of memetic compression can occur in which highly complex memes become much simpler ones. On the surface, this kind of compression would make sense in that it would reduce the “byte” size of a meme and allow for a higher copy fidelity. “The ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle” becomes pi (or better still: π). Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity becomes E=mc². [2]

It may not be the case with you, but it is possible to know the concept of pi without being able to precisely define it or even use it. You cannot understand the meme for pi unless you know what a circle is. Or if you were to only know it as a number (3.1415…) then you would not be able to know pi without perception of numbers. And if someone knew pi only as its relation to a geometric shape while someone else knew it to be the number only, do they possess the same meme? Or is it possible that memes come with their own set of instructions? If all you had for pi was the initial direction: “the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle” you would be able to deduce most of the above information for yourself. But if all you had was the symbol and the sound you wouldn’t be able to come up with much.

In effect, you’d have no ability to uncompress the meme for pi. But you would possess the necessary knowledge to direct yourself to more knowledge. You could type “pi” into google. You could ovehear the mention of pi on television or in conversation. You would be able to ask about pi. And the information you gathered about it would eventually collect around the symbol and the sound. In this sense, it is possible for people to possess the same meme in that they possess the compression of a pattern. It’s just that only some people “uncompress” it.

In other words, it is possible for people to possess different perceptions but similar patterns, or memes. To return for a moment to the example of solider, it is likely that you and I have different perceptions, different examples from which to draw, but we can agree to a similar pattern or abstraction of our perceptions. And the further benefit to a model of this kind is that many dependencies are eliminated. We could agree to the concept of soldier but disagree about the concept of war and vice versa.

It’s a useful model but I should point out that in no way am I making an attempt at neurology. There is no “compression” engine in the mind — although it may itself be a kind of compression engine of perception. And a meme is still far from something concrete in my mind. But for the moment, it is a useful model of thought and culture and applying concepts like compression and density to memes fills the model out in a useful way.

[It also creates new possibilties that I will touch on soon here at banapana: the antimeme and webmeme.]

[1] It is completely reasonable to assume that there are cases of individuals, though, who would not agree with my categorization of any female as a soldier. And it is important to recognize that this is a cultural distinction.

[2] This is another good example because even if I possess (and I really am speaking form personal experience) these two memes and I know they are related, I’m not entirely sure that they’re equivalent. I know the E=mc² breaks down to “Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared” but I’m not entirely sure that this is the special theory versus the general theory. I’m even pretty sure that I knew that at one time but have since forgotten — which perhaps speaks to the staying power of the meme E=mc².

[ Technorati tags: memetics, philosophy, memes ]

“No, I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.”

###Day 1 The Shit-storm Begins Almost Immediately.

It’s important to note that a large movement in the software industry today, generally referred to as the Open Source movement, is made up of a loose confederation of programmers who believe that the key to making software more reliable and more flexible is to make sure that the source code be available to any who wants to modify it and that once modified, that same source code be made publicly available. This movement has found friends in other arenas, namely among artists in the form of the Creative Commons group. The folks at Creative Commons are worried that too little art is escaping in to the public domain where it can be used freely and are attempting to create alternatives to the ubiquitous copyright notion that keeps anyone from using an artist’s work for what is becoming an increasingly long period of time.¹ So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that labeling these folks as communists ruffled a few feathers.

Some of the commentary on the CNET page itself was interesting, some of it vulgar. A lot of posts simply put in that Bill Gates was just ignorant of most of the movement’s real potential; some were far more insulting. One of the “lighter” comments to follow the article was this one from Robert Dean:

“If Bill really believes that the proponents of Intellectual Property Reform are communists, he’s stupid. I don’t believe he’s stupid. I think he wants to protect the revenue stream from Windows Media DRM, so he’s going to disparage anyone who would undermine the need for draconian DRM schemes.”

Day 2

The Meme Goes Graphic By the very next day, some of the larger pundits on the web had begun taking Mr. Gates to task for his statement, including Lawrence Lessig (of Electronic Frontier Foundation fame) who said in his blog entry “what a total (intellectual) disappointment this man is”. BoingBoing, one the first new blogs to gain a large audience, also jumped in and something began to brew when one of BoingBoing’s readers, Matt Bradley said, “Obviously, what we need is a large red flag with a gold copyleft in the upper left, replacing the hammer and sickle.”

So let’s look at the evolution of our meme so far. The copyleft term itself was derived from a series of events beginning with Richard Stallman’s creation of the GNU public license (the first software license to enforce the open source software philosophy) in 1984 and ending with the inclusion of line “Copyleft — all Wrongs reserved” in the code of TinyBasic. Generally it is believed that this is the first occurrence of the meme “copyleft” although there is some dispute. And the meme was applied to the copyright symbol in fairly short order. So while the copyleft meme had been around for a number of years, itself a mutation of the copyright meme, it had yet to be associated with communism in any fashion.

Here now we see a new permutation of the copyleft symbol, namely its incorporation into the flag of the Soviet Union — thus uniting the concept of copyleft with that of history’s most infamous communist organization. But even more permutations followed just the next day — an explosion of concepts not unlike the large and rapid evolutionary changes some times found in the fossil record.²

Other Related Blog Entries: http://www.sweetbirch.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=91#trackback

Day 3

What’s a Meme Without a T-shirt By Day 3, Ken Mickles of Giant Robot Printing had taken the newly formed meme and emblazoned it on a nice red t-shirt. Other individuals created shirts on Cafepress as well. Today, on Google, the search “‘creative communist’ or ‘creative commie’” returns 1800 results.³ The creative communist meme appears to be spreading quickly. Let’s hope it doesn’t go the way of the XFL.

After that, meme became almost synonomous with the idea of trends and often trends on the internet. Google’s Zeitgiest often shows through search keywords what particular ideas and concepts are “hottest” on the web at any given time. With the advent of blogging, several sites have also popped up (blogdex, daypop) that track what bloggers are linking to and what the hottest topics are. But do trends, catchphrases and blogging topis really constitute memes?

Some scientists point out that it would be difficult to think that memes are something that can transmute from an idea in a brain to an artifact and back to an idea in another mind. That there is a meme in either mind seems clear, but how can a replicator use the body to (through speech or visual arts) communicate that meme. And more importantly, are memes really the exact same concept from mind to mind — surely individual experience differentiates what precisely any meme could be in terms of structure. For instance, if we both think of a bench, we’re not likely thinking of the same one. There are likely contrasting colors, sizes and even locales for the benches we are thinking of. But there is a core idea of bench beyond these perceptions because we know many things can be non-benches. Does this mean that there is a common denominator concept that is the meme for bench?

Other scientists, like Robert Aunger [amazon link] in “The Electric Meme” have attempted to look at what a meme might be considered to be in terms of what physically occurs in the brain. Is a meme a series of nuerons fired in a certain order? A chain of firings?

Largely though, for the moment, memes are base concepts (atomic concepts?) that seem to travel through the social consciousness with some amount of velocity — some faster than others. In the next memetics entry I’m going to explore a recent development of a meme and see if we can’t whiddle away some of the flotsam surrounding this concept. [update 2-8-05: I found the recent occurrence of a meme and attempted to trace it.]