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REPORT ABUSIVE REPLY
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Message Subject
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Is information alive? Memetics, show that information replicates, evolves and mutates.
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Poster Handle
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Plasmare |
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Post Content
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Cultural evolution, including the evolution of knowledge, can be modelled through the same basic principles of variation and selection that underly biological evolution. This implies a shift from genes as units of biological information to a new type of units of cultural information: memes.
A meme is a cognitive or behavioral pattern that can be transmitted from one individual to another one. Since the individual who transmitted the meme will continue to carry it, the transmission can be interpreted as a replication: a copy of the meme is made in the memory of another individual, making him or her into a carrier of the meme. This process of self-reproduction (the memetic life-cycle), leading to spreading over a growing group of individuals, defines the meme as a replicator, similar in that respect to the gene (Dawkins, 1976; Moritz, 1991).
Dawkins listed the following three characteristics for any successful replicator:
copying-fidelity:
the more faithful the copy, the more will remain of the initial pattern after several rounds of copying. If a painting is reproduced by making photocopies from photocopies, the underlying pattern will quickly become unrecognizable.
fecundity:
the faster the rate of copying, the more the replicator will spread. An industrial printing press can churn out many more copies of a text than an office copying machine.
longevity:
the longer any instance of the replicating pattern survives, the more copies can be made of it. A drawing made by etching lines in the sand is likely to be erased before anybody could have photographed or otherwise reproduced it. [ link to pespmc1.vub.ac.be] Quoting: Plasmare 1443244 Dawkins? Jeez, you need to get out more. Start with Saussure, then move to Barthes. Stop re-inventing the wheel... How is providing a little background info for people who know nothing about memetics, reinventing the wheel? If you know so much why don't you write something more meaningful? I see memetics controlling people's actions everyday, influencing their thought patterns and behaviour. GLP is makes for a good observational tool for the spread of information and I'm not the only person to realize that. I'm sure that certain individuals and groups use this site to test how certain information spreads. Lies and insane beliefs run rampant on here and one can see what kind of effect it has on people and it's not a very good one... but they still spread, from person to person.
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