>> Is everything posted on this news group a meme or meme wana-be's or request
for other meme's?
Ray Higgins
"Believing is Seeing"
rayhiggins@aol.com <<
I don't know if there is an actual official definition of "meme" yet, but
there are certainly many variants. I think the most expansive definition that
I still find useful and carries the flavor of it goes something like this:
A meme is any pattern or configuration of information that has been
evaluated for its tendency to become replicated within the minds of humans.*
This allows for an evaluation of information not just in terms of its content,
meaning and function, but also in terms of its tendency to become replicated,
altered, or associated with other patterns or configurations of information.
In short we are talking about the tendency of informational patterns and
configurations to *EVOLVE*.
Since raw information is much more maleable than DNA-encoded information,
it will tend to change much more radically over shorter periods of time.
None-the-less instructive paralels can be drawn between DNA-based-
informational evolution and brain-based informational evolution. Also each
evolutionary system has effects that are carried into the other system.
Further, with the advent of genetic engineering, these two evolutionary realms
are bound to become more intimately intermingled in the future.
By using the word "meme" we are signaling that we are refering to information
less for its content, function, and actual meaning, and more for its
evolutionary characteristics and potentials. Content, function, and meaning
do not wash out of the picture, but are actually parts of the greater gestalt
(or configuration for the behaviorists). Instead of just using and processing
information we are also observing its evolution within human society.
*(The behaviorists among us may prefer to say that the information is
replicated within the brains of humans. That may not present any
complications, although I still think of it as the mind, because I am
referring to the active aware state of the brain, and I still think of "mind"
as an emergent property of brain functioning. Richard Dawkins originally
talked about memes in terms of mind as well, although I am not sure there is
any reason the definition cannot be accurately reconstructed for behaviorists
with no change in the function of the definition.)
Daniel Dennet also provides a definition of meme in his essay
<A HREF="http://www.tufts.edu/as/cogstud/papers/memeimag.htm">Memes and the
Exploitation of Imagination</A> that I think is pretty good and a little
different from how I have defined. I my definition I tried to be as expansive
as possible and still give the concept some actual meaning. Dennet's
definition is more narrow and probably more useful. Some of the things that
would be "memes" in my definition wouldn't be in his. What I might define as
a meme that is only moderately successful or not very successful, he probably
wouldn't consider to be a meme at all
-Jake