Introduction

Historically, memes have spread through word-of-mouth transmission - one person adopts (or develops) a meme, then communicates it to his acquaintances via speech; his acquaintances may then adopt the meme themselves and spread it to their acquaintances, etc. However, the advent of the written word allowed memes to be recorded for posterity, thereby increasing their stability. Furthermore, the advent of the printing press and mass literacy created an unprecedented memetic explosion.

Memetic Spread in Preliterate Societies

In preliterate societies, memes spread exclusively by direct demonstration or by word-of-mouth transmission. In the first method, memes spread by direct imitation of a host by a nonhost - for example, a person unskilled in the making of pottery who observes the actions of a skilled potter in order to gain an understanding of the trade. This method was commonly used for parental transmission - since children commonly inherited the trades of their parents, they could learn their parents' skills by imitation.

The second method, word-of-mouth transmission, is exactly what its name implies - memetic spread via direct verbal communication. This is common, of course, in the spread of religious or political memes (though the ritual components probably had an element of imitation as well). This was undoubtedly the method of transmission for almost all adult-to-adult communications in preliterate societies - people would share with each other such facts as the secrets of cooking a certain food, their opinions on what should be done about certain problems, or the rumors they have heard from other members of the society.

All knowledge possessed by the society must be transmitted in these fashions, or it will be lost (at least until it is rediscovered). This problem often led to the advent of designated people whose job included remembering and retelling the society's specific myths and legends, as well as imparting important knowledge to younger generations. This sort of reliance on memory obviously led to an extremely high mutation rate among memes, especially those that did not deal directly with questions of fact. Myths, legends, and other such stories are so varied because they were repeatedly altered over many generations of vertical transmission in preliterate cultures.

Writing and Memes in the Times of Scribes

During the first era following the invention of the written word, only specially trained scribes could read or write the complex pictographs that comprised early writing. Consequently, the advent of writing did not at first have a marked effect on the spread of memes through a population - just as in preliterate civilizations, the meme-spreading population could not read or write. During this time memes still spread through word-of-mouth transmission through the existing population, and skills were still generally acquired through direct demonstration.

However, the advent of writing did have an important effect: it stabilized many memes considered vitally important to the culture. No longer were myths and legends dependent on the memory of certain members of the society; now, they could be accurately recorded and preserved for generations. The same rule applied to new scientific discoveries, which no longer perished without minds capable of understanding them in the next generation. After writing became possible, these discoveries could be recorded for posterity. Furthermore, writing made larger societies possible, since kings or rulers could now record their laws, their history, and their commands to the people. Writing allowed the effective administrative area of a single ruler to vastly increase.

Meme Spread and Literacy: Ancient Greece and Rome

In ancient Greece and Rome, literacy became more common and accessible to more than just a few selected scribes servicing the whole of the society. In Greece and Rome, writing was used for communication, education, and recording information. Writing was used extensively to record scientific discoveries, philosophical thinking, government edicts and laws, literary works, and historical facts in Greece; consequently, writing became a key part of Greek education, especially in city-states such as Athens. Similarly, in Rome, writing became vitally important to proper governmental function and was used in specifications for the major architectural projects that gain Rome much of its fame today.

All these improvements in communication led logically to an improvement in the spread and in the copying-fidelity of memes. Laws that were recorded and could be read by a large portion of the population were less likely to be broken or altered by the government, and orders or edicts issued were less likely to be misunderstood (or not received at all). Literary works are of course rich sources of memes, which naturally diffused through the literate population - and then entered the illiterate population as well. However, with everyone reading at least approximately the same work, these memes were less likely to undergo mutation as they spread.

Printing Presses, Mass Literacy, and Memes

With the invention of the movable-type printing press by Johann Gutenberg, written works could be mass-produced at relatively little cost in relatively little time. This invention - one of the greatest boons in history as far as memes are concerned - quickly led to the printing of numerous literary works, historical documents, etc., increasing literacy among the masses. As the process of increasing literacy continued (and still continues in the present day), the ability of memes to spread far and wide with relatively little effort became phenomenal.

At one point, it was difficult to spread a meme about philosophy, because it was relatively unrelated to the everyday lives of the people. Therefore, it had little chance of reaching many people and tended to be ineffective as a replicator. Similarly, it would once have been difficult to spread an unpopular meme, because those in opposition to it could simply refuse to adopt it, thereby stopping, or at least slowing, its replication. However, mass market printing allows authors of almost any persuasion to reach at least a small number of fellow adherents among a virtually global audience.

Memetic Diversity

The advent of more widespread memetic spreading contributed to the downfall of other, older memes. Access to information about numerous trades could easily lead children to choose a trade different from that of their parents. Access to information about different social structures, religions, or lifestyles could lead children to adopt one of these new memes, thus giving up their old parentally-instilled meme. Though this transition from a closed hereditary society to an open merit-based society is still taking place, the ubiquity of alternate memes is now allowing people a greater range of memes to adopt. Whereas once the only available memes were those of the parents (and usually the society's as well) and those invented independently, in modern times the range of available memes is much wider, and those memes are likely to have a replicative advantage over parentally-transmitted memes.

Divergence of Memetic Modes

It is possible that a divergence is occurring in the memetic population between parentally-transmitted and culturally-transmitted memes. In the first category exist the "conservative" old-style memes, which specialize in vertical transmission and long retention. These memes tend to encourage large families and to promote transmission of parental memes to children. They also tend to bias adherents against adoption of rival memes, generally in the form of advocacy of tradition. (In other words, they specialize in the parental and preservational modes of transmission.) These memes seem to be losing ground to the faster-replicating "radical" memes which took advantage of the print revolution and are now seizing the day of the digital revolution. (In other words, they utilize primarily the proselytic avenue of spread.) They specialize in horizontal transmission through every possible avenue: books, telephones, radio, television, and the Internet. These memes experience more intense competition than do conservative memes, but they also spread at a much faster rate - they need not wait for new generations of children to grow up.

Radical memes are also probably evolving at a much higher rate than are conservative memes. Conservative memes vaunt tradition and generally advocate the status quo or even a return to the past. Radical memes, on the other hand, are rushing headlong toward the future and have no need for the past, which was less salutary for their type of transmission. Consequently, highly traditional populations such as ultra-Orthodox Jews have little to no evolution of their memes, and are probably on the decline by current standards. Conversely, highly nontraditional or recently-emergent populations such as American libertarians enjoy a very high memetic-evolution rate and consequently a large amount of diversity in their meme pool.

Looking Further: Links and References

These links and references are useful in the study of memetics in society.

• Books
  • The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
  • The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins
  • Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society by Aaron Lynch
  • The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore
  • Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme by Richard Brodie
  • Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life by Daniel C. Dennett

• Websites
  • Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
  • Memetics Resources
  • Meme Central
  • Viruses of the Mind by Richard Dawkins
  • Memetics from Principia Cybernetica Web

Biological Evolution | Cultural Evolution | Languages Philosophy | History of Evolution | Interactivities FAQ | Forum | Guestbook | References | About Us Home | Search | Index | Features | Newsflash! Site News | Our Awards | New!  Featured Links