Technologies are composed of technologies, which are composed of other technologies. Arthur notes that technology has a kind of recursive structure. Brian Arthur’s research on technological evolution suggests a mechanism. Sometimes they drive us to thrive, sometimes to rage, sometimes they drive us into the ground. We happen to be useful vehicles for getting around. (Carl Jung)ĭawkins is explicit about this in The Selfish Gene. Memes are the unit of selection here, so the funny thing is… Selection : useful, interesting, or controversial memes get repeated. Heredity : people copy memes from other people.

The Selfish Gene)Īlso, we know evolution happens in any system with mutation, heredity, selection, so we can say memes evolve! memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.

But do we have to go to distant worlds to find other kinds of replicator and other, consequent, kinds of evolution? I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.Įxamples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. If there are, provided certain other conditions are met, they will almost inevitably tend to become the basis for an evolutionary process. The gene, the DNA molecule, happens to be the replicating entity that prevails on our own planet.

A provocation from Dawkins: ideas are alive!

Procreate idea