A Meme (pronounced like “dream”) is an information pattern, held in an individual's memory, which is capable of being copied to another individual's memory. Memes are the basic building blocks of our minds and culture, in the same way that genes are the basic building blocks of biological life.

Memetics is the theoretical and empirical science that studies the replication, spread and evolution of memes. Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins is credited with first publication of the concept of meme in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.

According to Dawkins, examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch phrases, clothes fashions, and ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm 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. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. It is argued that the understanding of memes is of similar importance and consequence as the understanding of processes involving DNA and RNA in molecular biology.

Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in a mind, you literally plant a parasite in the brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the same way that a virus may plant a parasite in the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say, 'belief in life after death' is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of people all over the world.

Memes, like genes, vary in their fitness to survive in the environment of human intellect. Some reproduce like bunnies, but are very short-lived (fashions), while others are slow to reproduce, but hang around for eons (religions, perhaps?). Note that the fitness of the meme is not necessarily related to the fitness that it confers upon the human being who holds it. The most obvious example of this is the "Smoking is Cool" meme, which does very well for itself while killing off its hosts at a great rate. (Lee Borkman.)

http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Memetics/day.life.html A Day in the Life of a Meme by Liane Gabora from the Center for the Study of the Evolution and Origin of Life. This paper presents a tentative model for how an individual becomes a meme-evolving agent and discusses implications for complex creative thought processes and why they are unique to humans. A hypothetical scenario for the evolutionary dynamics of a given meme in a society of interacting individuals is presented. Gives an example of how a meme propagates.

http://virus.lucifer.com/ Church of the Virus.

www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_10/downes/ Memes usage in advertising, education, music.

It is tempting to consider memes as simply "ideas," but more properly memes are a form of information. (Genes, too, are information: instructions, written in DNA, for building proteins.) Thus, the meme for, say, the first eight notes of the Hogan’s Heroes theme can be recorded not only in the neurons of a person (who will recognize the notes when he/she hears them) but also in magnetic patterns on a videocassette or in ink markings on a page of sheet music.

Dawkins called the information that gets copied the "replicator" and pointed out that the most familiar replicator is the gene. But he wanted to emphasize that evolution can be based on any replicator, and so, as an example, he invented the idea of the meme. The copying of memes from one person to another is imperfect, just as the copying of genes from parent to child is sometimes inaccurate. We may embellish a story, forget a word of the song, adapt an old technology or concoct a new theory out of old ideas. Of all these variations, some go on to be copied many times, whereas others die out. Memes are thus true replicators, possessing all three properties—replication, variation, and selection—needed to spawn a new Darwinian evolutionary process.

The most obvious examples of this phenomenon are "viral" memes. Chain letters (both hard-copy and e-mail) consist of little bits of written information, including a "copy-me" instruction backed up with threats (if you break the chain you will suffer bad luck) or promises (you’ll receive money and you can help your friends). It does not matter that the threats and promises are empty and your effort in copying the letters is wasted. These memes have an internal structure that ensures their own propagation.

The same can be said, Dawkins argues, of the great religions of the world. Dawkins has made himself extremely unpopular in some circles by calling religions "viruses of the mind". They sneak into our minds, avoid our memetic defenses, and get themselves propagated all around the world, even though their claims are false. Of all the myriad small cults with charismatic leaders that have sprung up in human history, only a few had what it took to survive—copy-me instructions backed up with threats and promises. In religions the threats are of death or eternal damnation, and the promises are of everlasting bliss. The costs are a proportion of one’s income, a lifetime devoted to propagating the word, or resources spent on building magnificent mosques and cathedrals that further promote the memes. The genes may even suffer directly at the hands of the memes—as occurs with a celibate priesthood. Arguably, religions are not entirely viral; for example, they provide comfort and a sense of belonging. In any case, we must not make the mistake of thinking that all memes are viruses.

www.susanblackmore.co.uk/SciAm00.html The Power or Memes.

“Dear Friend, pass on this letter and you will have good luck for a year.” Have you ever fallen for a chain letter? Perhaps you got one urging you to send money or postcards or stamps, or the more sinister---Pass this on to ten of your friends or you will fall ill, die, suffer a fate worse than death...?

These memes succeed because they use crude tricks to get themselves copied, together with threats or promises. Their modern versions are winging their way around the Internet, using up valuable resources for their own selfish propagation. A long-running warning from "Penpal Greetings" begins "received this morning from IBM". It tells you (at great length) to warn all your friends not to open the dangerous "Trojan Horse" virus. So you pass on the friendly warning, not realizing, unless you are very wily, that the warning itself is the virus---this is what gets into millions of e-mail boxes all over the world.

Fortunately most memes succeed because we want to copy them, from useful inventions like cars and central heating to beautiful paintings, stories and music. There are languages and customs, political ideologies and scientific theories. All these count as memes because they are copied from person to person. But what we must remember is that memes succeed because we copy them---some for good reasons---others not.

www.memes.org.uk/ByAuthor/SusanBlackmore/THES19990226.html

Susan Blackmore is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and author of The Meme Machine, Oxford University Press.

http://maxwell.lucifer.com/virus/alt.memetics/faq.html Meme Bibliography.

http://maxwell.lucifer.com/virus/alt.memetics/index.html#urls

Memetics on the Internet

www.memecentral.com/ Richard Brodie.

Internet Virus Antidote

Could you be unwittingly spreading a virus of the mind? Passing on lies and misinformation to your friends?

Could you or someone you know be a victim of an Internet Mind Virus?

You could. But never fear: the antidote is here. You've seen messages promising money, luck, or sex -- as long as you pass them on. Messages warning you of a dangerous new virus, and begging you to tell your friends, quick! Or perhaps you've seen a topical joke that you wanted to send to all your friends -- send it fast, before they hear it from someone else!

All of these are viruses. Not computer viruses, but MIND viruses. These messages all have one thing in common: they contain compelling messages, or memes, that grab our attention and persuade us to pass them on. These memes play on our fear of loss, or embarrassment, or appeal to us with promises of sex or money or good luck. Some of messages make us feel good about ourselves because we believe that by passing on a plea for help or signing a petition, we're doing a good deed.

And sometimes we are. A mind virus or meme is not by itself a bad thing. But would you pass on a mysterious computer virus to a friend? Of course not.

A powerful Internet Mind Virus compels us to re-send it to others. The message spreads explosively as we and many others help it reproduce. The information in the message -- whether true or false, useful or not -- becomes widespread, infecting many people.

Most of these viruses of the mind are spread because they are intriguing or frightening or inspiring, and not necessarily because they're true. That's the problem.

http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/weekly/mpreviss.htm

Good site for mind viruses that get spread to others.

From the standpoint of humans, ideas are the currency of the information economy. An idea, which replicates well is worth money, because the idea that implants itself of intuitive knowledge acts as a determinate of behavior. The best way to get a person to buy your product or to use your service is to internalize it, to make it an automatic action. In advertising it's an old rule of thumb: mention the product name three times in a 15 second spot.

Selection favors the memes, which are easiest to understand, to remember, and to communicate to others.

www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Memetics/memecycle.html#2.5. The Life Cycle of a Meme