From: Grant Callaghan (grantc4@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon 10 Feb 2003 - 15:46:15 GMT
>We humans are all meme machines. So are the
photocopiers and telephones, computers and web servers
that we have built to help us. But why are they
changing so fast, and were they really designed for
our benefit?
>According to the theory of memetics, they were all
designed by memetic evolution for the sake of the
memes themselves. Like genes, memes are replicators.
That is, they are information that is copied with
variation and selection, which makes an evolutionary
process possible. As with other evolutionary
processes, memetic or cultural evolution happens for
the benefit of the replicators themselves, in this
case the memes. The internet, the web and all its
consequences are just what we should expect of the
rapidly accelerating evolution of meme machines.
I think, if the words above are Susan's, there is a misunderstanding of what
memes are doing in their evolution. In this case, I think the use of
genetic metaphor is somewhat justified. I don't think memes are designing
themselves "for" anything. I think they are evolving in response to their
environment, which is us. They are not evolving to benefit themselves or
us. They are evolving to meet the demands their environment places on them.
There is another blind watchmaker working here and what he produces will
be the result of changes taking place in society and the people who comprise
it.
This cultural evolution is changing us as fast as it is changing the tools
we use and the reason we are changing the tools is to meet our ever greater
expectations for ourselves. Examples: we are building nanomachines and
biomachines to change our environment and ourselves. We are no longer
depending on genetic evolution to decide which direction the world's plant
and animal life should take. We expect nanomachines to produce changes
within us that genes and their products cannot.
As we change, our machines will change to fit our needs. Eventually, we
will be one with our machines in our machine/human world. We seem to be
heading that way now and as our skill increases in the manufacture of new
machines to do things we never dreamed of doing before, the kinds of things
we produce will adjust to those needs, too. In other words, the evolution
of those memes will change to fit the changing environment. Those changes
will not necessarily benefit individual memes but the meme pool as a whole
as it pertains to demands of it's environment.
The memes themselves have no goal in mind. Their evolution is mindless.
Whatever their changing environment demands will determine their individual
path of change. But the day is coming (things like computers designing
machines and other computers) when the memes will take over the task of
desiging everything for us, including themselves, and then there will be a
memetic mind behind the evolution of memes as well as people.
That this process has already started can be seen in the design of modern
aircraft, where the task would be impossible without computers to do the job
and the evolution of evolutionary design processes for building bridges and
other engineering problems.
Grant
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