Of Data, 'Memes,' and Dreams
By seannelson
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As per usual, I've been giving a lot of thought to technology and the sciences, though I haven't been writing much for a period. But critical to several or more key modern scientific fields is the concept of the 'meme' as Sir Richard Dawkins conceived it in 'The Selfish Gene.' A meme is like a helix of biological genetic information that informs the structure and behavior of a social group or an internet landscape, a legislative era, and so forth. There is something virus-like about how memes work; but if a meme is sound it well worth its viral load, one might say; and regardless we are only describing what already exists not creating new problems the world did not have already. But the trouble is that all these scripts and cultures and codes, symbols, nomenclatures that form memes or we could say social and intellectual and digitial genetics are too complex and thus become a nuisance to their bearers, and thus are often eschewed to their own survival, reproduction detriment. Increasingly, we need meme genes that are streamlined, to the point, vivid yet concise in symbolism, and moreover are tied to the work, emotional events, and struggles of the populations we are vying for, as Obelisks in the Stanford University sense. We are after all, like John Lennon sung, just 'playing those mind games together; projecting our images in space and in time,' though there's a bit more to it, and more constructive and productive purposes for it than at first meets the eye.
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