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Meme theory: Who's that guy?

Aertho

14:41 / 24.04.03

What the name of the man that developed the theory that ideas or language is like a virus? I think it's the meme-guy, but I'm not sure.

Could someone please inform me of his gentleman and tell me what books/sites to look at for more information?

Persephone

15:02 / 24.04.03

I think you mean Richard Dawkins. The book is the The Selfish Gene, the revised edition that includes his chapter on memes.

pomegranate

17:42 / 24.04.03

there's also that guy who wrote a whole book, piggybacking on dawkins' concept of memes--aaron lynch (the book is called thought contagion).
it was ok, but he writes a little too much like it's absolutely fact; i just wanted to blow smoke like the Dude in the big lebowski and say, "that's just, like, yr opinon, man."
i liked the tipping point better.

Perfect Tommy

19:00 / 24.04.03

The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore is another excellent book that takes the meme concepts and runs with it. (The meme meme is one fecund meme...)

illmatic

19:01 / 24.04.03

The first person I know of to have used the language and virus idea is William Burroughs - don't know in which texts though - you might find something in one of the biographies or The Adding Machine. An uneasy bedfellow with Richard Dawkins, I think.

captain piss

08:30 / 25.04.03

yeah, I think Burroughs is behind the 'language is a virus' comment. There's quite an interesting essay by Phil Hine and Dave Lee (http://www.phhine.ndirect.co.uk/archives/ess_opov.htm) that talks about this concept in kind of experiential language. There's also lots of really great headfuck sentences in this essay like "Psychic wastelands spewed up by the self-devouring beast of the hyper-real".

Secularius

12:20 / 25.04.03

Yep, it was definitely William Burroughs who said: "Language is a virus". But the word meme was coined by the biologist (I think) Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. He didn't care much for developing this idea further though, and only mentioned it in the last chapter. The idea has been carried on further most successfully by psychologist Susan Blackmore, author of The Meme Machine.

dj kali_ma

20:09 / 25.04.03

Being that I've not read "The Selfish Gene" yet, can anyone tell me if there's any etymological goodies associated with the word "meme"?

I remember seeing it when I was younger and saying, "Me, me?"

A.

LucasCorso

10:18 / 26.04.03

I think it's from an Ancient Greek root, "Mimeme", which means "Imitation". But then, instead of calling it "mimeme", Dawkins rather preferred the abbreviation "meme", to sounds like "gene".
And another quite good book about memes is "Viruses of the mind" by Richard Brodie, even if "THE Meme machine" by Blackmore is far off better.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:04 / 26.04.03

Hmmm - the Ancient Greek for "imitation" is "mimesis", from the verb "mimeomai", I imitate, which I think ultimately shares a root with "mimnesko", but I could be wrong.

That's "imitation" the abstract concept - *an* imitation is "mimelos", or "mimema"..so, actually, best guess would be "mimema". It's a really clumsy and nasty transferral, but that's popular science for you..

gingerbop

21:26 / 26.04.03

I conducted a small [unintentional] experiment, in which, whenever anyone asked me how i was, i said i was "spiffing". It took 2 weeks before one or two of my friends began to do the same. Now the word is pissing me off, frankly.
Shit.. they're spreading the virus as much as they can in schools- in fact they were trying to get me to take on 3 viruses!

slinkyvagabond

22:18 / 26.04.03

Is the concept of a meme somehow linked to all that 100th monkey stuff (yes, I'm having a linguistically dumb night.....or something...y'know)? And Laurie Anderson has a song in which the refrain goes "Language, it's a virus (whoo!)". As for gingerbop's spiffing experiment, well, I"ve picked up and disseminated some awful phrases rather virally too. One of the worst was my friend's deliberately cheesy "wowee!". People looked at me funny.

captain piss

10:08 / 27.04.03

The 100th monkey story (summarised at http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm - how the fuck do you incude HTML in a post?) was used by the biologist Rupert Sheldrake (http://www.sheldrake.org/) to illustrate the possible activity of morphogenetic or ‘morphic’ fields. This is his theory that some objects resonate with each other and influence each other’s behaviour and development over space and time. It’s a similar idea to Jung’s collective unconscious except the theory applies not just to people but to everything in nature- the formation of crystals, galaxies, whatever.
The meme, on the other hand, is the word that’s been coined to refer to any bit of information that can be transferred from person to person by imitation. And err, I suppose the ‘language is a virus’ thing is a similar idea, although the idea of a ‘virus’ sounds a bit nastier, maybe putting more emphasis on the idea that language is in some ways bad for the human host (?)

---

03:02 / 12.03.04

This is crazy, i've just changed usernames and included memetic, and the last person to reply to this has meme in their name.

Anyway, i thought i'd bring this back because i think it's interesting, do any of you think the idea of meme's will become bigger and more studied, taught about and do you think it could be applied in the future as a more effective way of teaching/learning things?

I've found these two sites that discuss it :

Journal of Memetics
Principia Cybernetica

The second site has loads of stuff in it. Thoughts?

agvvv

05:20 / 12.03.04

This text by Burroughs seems to touch the subject..

trouser the trouserian

07:38 / 12.03.04

Douglas R. Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas has some good stuff on memes too.

---

00:08 / 13.03.04

Thanks, but Adrian your link sends me to the main page here can you post back with the link to the Burroughs text please?

agvvv

06:37 / 13.03.04

There.. I should really begin to sleep at night

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10:13 / 13.03.04

Thanks for that, i'm sure i had this text before but i didn't add it to my favourites, i'll make sure i do this time.

rory

13:47 / 07.04.04

A Note on the Origin of 'Memes'/'Mnemes'.

Henningjohnathan

14:02 / 07.04.04

Phillip K Dick also developed a similar idea in his novel VALIS when he described the gnostic gospels as living self replicating ideas.
Tom Wolfe wrote a very entertaining essay on the idea of memes (basically ending with "there is as much proof of the existence of memes as there is for the existence of God i.e. none at all.")
Also, Ed Regis brings it up in his excellent book, GREAT MAMBO CHICKEN AND THE TRANSHUMAN CONDITION.

krimopol

21:54 / 07.04.04

more commentary and developing of the ideas of playing with memes and their effects can be procured from ADBUSTERS magazine and its editor Kalln Lasn. His book "Culture Jam," though rough and, for purposes of accessability, simple, is fascinating and consequent. Another author who makes use of the meme theory and turned it into some interesting concepts is Daniel Quinn, author of "The Story of B," "Ishmael," and "Beyond Civilization." Highly reccommended.

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