Paul Kelly on Fri, 12 May 2000 05:06:07 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> It's not me it's my genes, or is it my memes? |
At 9:49 AM -0400 5/7/00, Ana Viseu wrote: >Memes are ideas that replicate >themselves by jumping from brain to brain. Urban myths--such as the woman >drying up the cat in the microwave--are examples of memetic replication. Urban myths are always the most convenient and obvious examples of memes. But do memes have an explanatory power outside of rumours, fads and legends already optimized for repeatability? How about the wheel? Why didn't the Mayans invent the wheel? Was it because they had no contact with the infectious meme? Or was it because their culture was infertile ground for such a technology? If the latter then we fall back on the old disciplines to explain why Mayans didn't have wheels: history, geography, economics, etc. How much explanatory power do memes really have? >The first, and already stated above, is the de-responsibilization that >comes along with such a view. If not we but the memes themselves are >responsible for their replication then who is the accountable actor: the >individual, or the meme? Here's a typical Dawkins passage: "A human child is shaped by evolution to soak up the culture of her people. Most obviously, she learns the essentials of their language in a matter of months. A large dictionary of words to speak, an encyclopedia of information to speak about, complicated syntactic and semantic rules to order the speaking, are all transferred from older brains into hers well before she reaches half her adult size. When you are pre-programmed to absorb useful information at a high rate, it is hard to shut out pernicious or damaging information at the same time. With so many mindbytes to be downloaded, so many mental codons to be replicated, it is no wonder that child brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion, vulnerable to subversion, easy prey to Moonies, Scientologists and nuns. Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off without effort." ("Viruses of the Mind" , http://www.aracnet.com/~atheism/writ/dawkins4.htm) This is an incredibly naive view of the mind and learning, akin to Karl Popper's "bucket theory" of mind which he spent his whole life arguing against. If you believe this then you believe we are completely at the mercy of the environment and that only scientific experts should be put in charge of raising children. >This leads directly into the third point, that of the reduction to >information. If we are but our genes and memes, and these are composed of >information, then it follows that we are also information. Information reductionism was an underlying assumption of every other Wired article when I used to read Wired (probably still is). Here's an article on DJs from 2.08: "There are different DJs for every different music style -- techno, acid jazz, hip hop, ambient -- but all of them are essentially doing the same thing: manipulating information. Recorded music is stored information, and the best DJ has the best record collection -- the best information. This consists of the most current, updated information (recent releases); the most solid base of information (standards and classics); and the most esoteric, rare pieces of information (out-of-print records). The one who can manipulate information in the freshest style (cutting, scratching, mixing beats) is the best DJ." Gee, and I thought music was about having a good time. Wired's cover story on Dawkins (3.07) followed the release of his _River Out of Eden_ which "extends his life's work into a unified evolutionary theory arguing that all life, at its core, is a process of digital-information transfer." So, if life is digital information and programmers work with digital info, that makes programmers like... Gods! Here's where digital utopian dreams finds their pseudo-scientific justification. Paul -- END ******************************************************* Paul Kelly: pkelly@calumet.yorku.ca http://www-home.calumet.yorku.ca/pkelly/www/ ******************************************************* _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold