[Rocketsheep]

What is it and where can I buy one? :D


Oh OK, I know the basic concept and its use as a pretensious metaphor but it has developed a life of its own in SF.

Just how far can we push it?
What can we do with it?
What could happen if memes take over the world? Mwahahahaha! Cough! Cough!
Or have they already and we just don't realise? :confused:

[fortytwo]

Ah... Rocketsheep you couldn't elucidate ?

[Rocketsheep]

Oh dear, I was hoping YOU could elucidate.

A meme is an idea considered (metaphorically) as a living being whose environment is the mind of a sentient being. Some people describe almost all of human activity in terms of clusters of memes struggling to survive through a variety of means. Others simply see the idea of ‘memes’ as a useful metaphor. There is an Essay by Dr David Brin suggests that four major memes have dominated human history.

Americans seem particularly fond of the word 'meme' so I was hoping here I'd find people who'd given some thought as to its science fiction connotations by imagining for instance:

"Let's say they are real... not just some high metaphor... let's say they remain in people's minds by triggering some pleasant response... let's say that makes people not only unresistant to them but prone to spreading them by word of mouth to others... let's say a whole generation of people were infected by a meme who's purpose was to damage humanity by say... making people treat their offspring badly."
How would that affect the population? Who would know it was wrong if everyone was infected? Who created the meme and first set it loose? Are there any memes already loose here and now? Is religion a meme? Does it have a purpose that we don't know about? (Not intending to bash religion... I could have said 'violence' but it has a less organised hierachy.)

Just fooling with some SF ideas. I find the concept of memes, if you give them a reality, to be quite devious and frightening.

[Rocketsheep]

Of course the hero of any story would have to be someone who was resistant to infection by memes and that would be a story in itself... was he innoculated? If so, did the innoculation come from the same people who created the meme? Is he naturally resistant? Is this some form of human adaption for survival? Does he struggle against the pleasant promises of contracting a full blown meme? Is he miserable in a land of happy infected people? Does he seclude himself away to resist infection or does he campaigne against the memes and try to make the world see what is going on? Do the people who created the meme put up with that sort of behaviour?

OK, you can see that this thread should just be renamed the Meme Extrapolation Thread and I am doing pretty well by myself... brain must be more alert today. Thanks for asking forty-two... with a name like that you should know all the answers... but what are the questions?

[Hobbit]

I thought that the idea of memes was the fact that we were all part of some biological 'supercomputer', repeating activities, adapting and evolving as we go along. Cogs in the machine and all that.

Saw something on the UK SFChannel a year or so ago - that was the impression it left me with....

[estranghero]

You could try out John Barnes' "Kaleidoscope Century" as it mentions memes in its backstory.

Suffice to say, in the far, far future, memes have generated their own artificial intelligences and infected the whole mankind. This, in turn, caused a meme war among its 'infected' hosts. (Sorry, I don't think I need a spoiler warning since it's only part of the backstory and not part of the actual story itself.)

[asimovian]

Rocketsheep,

Some people describe almost all of human activity in terms of clusters of memes struggling to survive through a variety of means

Could actually be the subject of a SF novel by itself... good memes fighting the bad ones.
Rocketsheep, I think you could be Orwell's successor.

[Bill]

The concept of meme was invented by the biologist Richard Dawkins and first explained in his book The Selfish Gene. He doesn't mean the concept metaphorically. Ideas replicate and mutate in a way analogous to genes. Anything that replicates and mutates immediately becomes subject to natural selection.

The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, also by Dawkins, are the best explanations of natural selection and evolution of which I know.

[asimovian]

What is the universe all about ... does it revolve around the meme or around the 'me' ?

[Rocketsheep]

Orwell's successor? More likely his supper! Sheep didn't do too well in Animal Farm did they?

Now here, you see, two people are suggesting that memes are more like the instincts that tell small-minded beasties like the monarch to migrate from South America to Canada each year... and they could be for all I know.

But if someone is the product of er... troubled parents and they survive... then that troubling meme may be passed along... perhaps the world isn't hard enough to wipe out the rogue memes. Too much social justice to ensure a healthy population of 'fittest' to survive us?

Just a thought. I've heard of Richard Dawkins but I'm just too lazy to research the science fact... I'd rather toy with the science fiction.

I don't know how anything could create and plant a nasty meme... but it would make a great story.