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Title: The Meme Machine by Susan J. Blackmore, Richard Dawkins ISBN: 0-19-850365-2 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.69 (71 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Meme Machine unleashed!
Comment: Human bodies evolved by natural selection, just
as other animals. But still we are different.
According to Susan Blackmore thats because we are
capable of imitation. We can thereby copy ideas,
habits,inventions, songs and stories. I.e. memes.
And now memes are as powerful, if not more powerful,
than the good old genes, in directing human evolution.
I find the idea intriguing, and certainly
Susan Blackmore argue well for the idea.
The (evolutionary) pressure for imitation skills
requires big brains. So we evolve big brains, as people
mate with the ones with the most memes.
Language is invented in order to spread memes.
Film stars, journalists, writers, singers,
politicians and artists become the most
attractive, as they are the ones who spread the
most memes.
Things that are hard to explain in a genetic
context (such as adoption, birth control, celibacy) are
easy to explain in a meme context
(the memes are happy with it, as it help spread
more memes).
Science becomes a process to distinguish
true memes from false memes. Fax-machines, telephones,
etc. are created (by the memes) in order to spread more
memes. Writing is a battleground in the head between
memes wanting to be spread.
etc.
It all rings true to me.
Except Susan Blackmores claim that the self
is a complex meme. Certainly it is puzzling
that blind people are reported thinking that their
"I" is located at their fingertips, when they
read Braille.
Still there are other explanations to what
a human "I" is than memes. Personally,
I prefer Antonio Damasios, as he explained
it in the book "the feeling of what happens".
Nevertheless, Susan Blackmores book is a very
exciting read, with lots of clever thoughts.
-Simon
Rating: 3
Summary: Intriguing - best taken with a grain of salt
Comment: Memetics is a good idea looking for real life research and practical applications that will free it from the realm of the philosopher kings. Susan Blackmore's book is another in a line of several that have tried to do so. While raising some interesting questions and making some interesting points, Meme Machines fails in this regard. Mostly it succeeds in rehashing the same controversies that plagued this subject, creating more unnecessary problems, and resolving none of them.
Despite the all-star cast of endorsements (Dennet and Dawkins) this book will mostly just succeed in making money for Blackmore, and perhaps spreading the idea of memes to new audiences that happen to think that Zen Buddhism is really groovey. In the mean time it may succeed in turning the idea of memes into the next new age fad - complete with prescriptions to free ourselves of the "tyranny" of the self - or as Blackmore the Zen guru might put it the "illusion of self".
The book gets off to a poor start by miscasting its basic philosophical questioning not in terms of memes, memetics, culture, or evolution, but by asking what is it that makes humans different from animals? Predictably asking poorly framed questions leads to conclusions that have even less to do with memes or memetics. Here I am referring to her incredible declarations which she makes central in the end of the book. We do not have selves, according to Blackmore. It's all a lie. Our memes have "tricked" us into thinking that we do - pesky li'l things. We should all become Zen Buddhists to save our non-selves from the memes!
I should hasten to add that along the way she makes many much less ridiculous and very good points. She provides some good behaviorist insight into true imitation, makes some interesting distinctions between that and social learning, and the roles that they play for memes. She provides some fertile ground for more applications of the genetic metaphor in her insightful distinctions between copying instructions vs. copying a product. She even makes some good cases for the role that such ideas like Platonic idealism play in memetic replication. All rich and worthwhile insights.
On the whole, I found her book to be very intelligent and entertaining, if deeply flawed in some fundamental respects. There were some useful insights definitely worth taking home, but there were other incredible flights of fantasy that I would have rather left behind. If you don't have your mind set on reading something in particular, this is an intriguingly good book - but it is far from being a seminal landmark in any scientific sense. If you are waiting for the book that will actually serve to make the case for the scientific legitimacy of memetics, save your money.
If you are interested in higher-quality peer-reviewed attempts at memetic theory without this irrelevant new-age fluff, I suggest you seek out a publication like the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transfer. There is better stuff out there even on the web other than the sources mentioned by Dawkins in his forward.
If you are interested in a good treatment of cultural evolution that does not deal in still- being-questioned words like "memes", and steers clear of new age fluff, I would recommend Gary Taylor's book "Cultural Selection" to balance Blackmore's more hype-ish approach.
-Jake
Rating: 1
Summary: very poor in itself...
Comment: if you would like to read something on memes one of the best books (Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme
by Richard Brodie )
it seems to me realy something clear about this new model or contruct or life paradigm.i may say something about susan b. book, it seems the truth about memes,like maybe one preacher telling one ot the gospel, ``subliminal authorrity manipulation``i would not say that.there is no deep reality(bohr)there is no chair(watzlawick).brodie is aware and a very clear with no preachings.another splendid quamtum... Liane Gabora home page on the net.
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Title: The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins ISBN: 0192860925 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think by Robert Aunger ISBN: 0743201507 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins ISBN: 0393315703 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science and Love by Richard Dawkins ISBN: 0618335404 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene (Popular Science) by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett ISBN: 0192880519 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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