Currently reading Virus of the Mind, by Microsoft’s Richard Brodie. It seems to be one of the original books dedicated to the science of memetics, which is heavily grounded in evolutionary psychology and also implicated in blogology as the foundation of the word “meme” which floats around every now and then.
meme: a unit of information in a mind whose existence influences events such that more copies of itself get created in other minds.
or blogs, as it were. I never knew where that name came from until now.
According to the introduction of the book, the main question around memetics goes like this:
Will we allow natural selection to evolve us randomly, without regard for our happiness, satisfaction or, spirit? Or will we seize the reins of our own evolution and pick a direction for ourselves?
Skimming through, looks like one of those books that paints a pretty clear picture of society’s current perceptions…I’m looking forward to reading it!
4 Comments
October 10, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I’m no scientist, but from what I do know, there’s nothing random about natural selection. Our happiness, satisfaction and spirit define how we adapt to our environment. And that’s how we evolve. That sounds like seizing the reins of our evolution and, maybe not picking a direction, but defining a direction. Picking a direction sounds so creationist!
October 11, 2009 at 6:50 pm
I loved some of Hofstadter’s thinking back when I read his books. Metamagical Themas was probably formational for me. The only thing I recall offhand from it was his proof that one person could indeed change the world by increasing the odds that others would also act in the same way. It’s an old truth (aren’t those the best?) and it was nice to see it in a mathematical context. It’s downright tragic that such a concept has devolved into silly follow-the-leader games.
Or not so silly if one recognizes that this is the entire basis of our current Branding and Marketing system of driving public voting/demanding/buying behavior.
October 11, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Should have mentioned in my post that Hofstadter coined the term “memetics”…
October 12, 2009 at 9:02 pm
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