idea, behavior or style that spreads within a culture From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about cultural information. For memes related to the internet, see Internet meme.
A meme (/miːm/MEEM) is an idea or belief which spreads because one person copies it from another.
One idea is that culture builds in a way similar to living things. An example would be how viruses spread to different organisms. Memes change as they go, creating controversy, and sculpting society. Just as a virus would, memes evolve from their state, being photoshopped, and exaggerated. Memes can be about anything.
Biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins invented the word meme in 1976.[1] He said that tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing fashions, ways of making pots, and the technology of building arches were all examples of memes.
Technology: cars, paper-clips, etc. The progress of technology is a bit like genetics, because it has spread by 'mutations' or changes to progress. For example, many paper-clip designs have been made. Some last longer than others, and some look better than others. In the end the ones that are copied are a memetic success.
Nursery rhymes: passed on from parent to child over many generations (thus keeping old words such as "tuffet" and "chamber" popular when they are not used today).
Epic poems: once important memes for preserving oral history; writing has largely superseded their oral transmission.
Moore's Law: this meme is particularly interesting. The original law was "semiconductor complexity doubles every 18 months". It described growth in terms of the number of transistors on a chip.
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 11. Memes:the new replicators, Oxford University, 1976, second edition, December 1989, ISBN0-19-217773-7; April 1992, ISBN0-19-857519-X; trade paperback, September 1990, ISBN0-19-286092-5
Aunger, Robert: The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think. Free Press, 2002, hardcover ISBN0-7432-0150-7
Aunger, Robert: Darwinizing culture: the status of memetics as a science. Oxford University Press, 2000, New-York ISBN0-19-263244-2
Henson, H. Keith: "Sex, Drugs, and Cults. An evolutionary psychology perspective on why and how cult memes get a drug-like hold on people, and what might be done to mitigate the effects", The Human Nature Review 2002 Volume 2: 343-355
