In Terms of Metaphors and Resources: What are Memes?

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Memes of Modern Culture: pg. 2 - Definition

What is a Meme?

From Answers.com is this definition, "A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another."

The American Heritage Dictionary, New College Edition, of 1980 does not have an entry for meme.

Today a Google search for meme brings up a count of 269 million sites in the search results.

From Answers.com is this definition, "A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another."

As of April, 12, 2008, the example of meme is this:"Pointing to the left's success in using tax-exempt organizations to raise funds, Mr. York puts paid to the meme that Republicans are the party bankrolled by the rich, " quoted from Look Back at Anger.

Today there is a wikipedia entry and a science of memetics to study the "social and cultural effects" of memes.

Getting to the Source

Richard Dawkins claims to have first coined the word, claims Wikipedia:

"As a unit of cultural evolution, a meme in some ways resembles a gene. Richard Dawkins, in his book, The Selfish Gene,[1] recounts how and why he coined the term meme to describe how one might extend Darwinian principles to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing-fashions, and the technology of building arches."

Memes are discussed in Darwinian terms, since the primary memes behind the idea are viruses and evolution. Another quote from the Wikipedia page says it well:

"Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection (similarly to Darwinian biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity's reproductive success. So with memes, some ideas will propagate less successfully and become extinct, while others will survive, spread, and, for better or for worse, mutate."

I first became aware of memes from an article in Whole Earth Review. Winter 1987, in the article Memetics: the science of information viruses by Keith Henson. You can read some of the older article from selected back copies Look for this one: Howard Rheingold, "Untranslatable Words", Whole Earth Review #57: 3-8, which is available through AbeBooks - Textbooks.

Glenn Grant, Memeticist, describes the power of memes and their study as a linguistic science in a really interesting article.

A website with software that uses XML to diagram concepts: Mind Map Software Could this be done without a knowledge of memes?

Books on memes are available everywhere. Try these resources.

The 2 images above are called "Tumbling" and "Greecian Swirl." They are fractal flames by Valerie. Get mugs, t-shirts, journal, and cards with these images. And check-out the memes used as bullets for the section headings. All of these images of ©VCCTI are available as mugs and stuff and as presentation template designs. Just follow the links!

The Value of Memes in Communication

Remember the "wind beneath my wings?" And what about the bestseller Johnathan Seagull? The book taught readers that we could all soar high, a meme of reaching personal goals that made the Bette Middler song so meaningful to us all. Without the soaring high seagull or the song "I Can Fly," would we actually cry whenever we heard the theme song "Wind Beneath my Wings" unless we had actually watched Beaches?

Remember the Lycos internet search website commercials with the dog that fetched the information? With a few graphics and catch phrases, most everyone learned to go to Lycos.com to find information and stuff on the internet. More importantly, it taught us about search itself.

Today google it might be synonomous with to search, but the Lycos.com dog taught many of us what to google meant.

Remember the analogy of the internet as a highway system? So many computer newbies learn about the internet through the use of highway and travel metaphors.

Memes provide a shared context for new information to be communicated and to be learned. You can see this in practice today on both the Science Channel and the Discovery Channel, which do a beautiful job of making technology and science understandable and interesting.

***Below looks like pg 1 of the series, but it is different in most content.***

World Speakers Association

Essays on Memes

Get this photo from Fotolia. schaf 7 © foto.fritz© & more by foto.fritz - FOTOLIA

"...memes as metaphors used in American culture today by TV writers, comedians, pop culture, marketing and business trainers and advertisers, politicians, and so many others to communicate information and persuade audiences." -V.C.

Consider the genetic engineering feat of cloning and its potential benefits in a world facing crisis:

Ode to Dolly
by Valerie Coskrey

Dolly had a little lamb.
It came the natural way.
Now everything that Mary’s can
A clone can do today.

“To clone,” you say, ”is playing God.
‘Tis sacrilegious. Nay.
We’ll lose our Faith, you know we will,
If we use tech that way.”

But “He helps him who helps himself”
Encourages men to plan
The use of nature in wondrous ways
To accomplish all we can.

What matters most in this age
Of stress from hotter days,
Is saving genes that work for us
No matter what the ways.

Indeed, our knowledge gained today might be what saves us tomorrow.

A Sheep and her Lamb;
A Teachable Moment

When you look at the sheep above, what thought comes to mind? Now focus on the windmill in the background. What thought comes to mind? How many essay themes does this one picture bring to mind? In how many fields of discipline? Get an example lesson using another picture.

Memes at Work

When I first saw the photo above, my first thought was of Dolly and her lamb. When I first heard about Dolly having a baby, I wrote the poem Ode to Dolly.

Now that you have read the poem, can you think of anything besides the cloned sheep Dolly when you look at the picture? Good communicators frame a discussion by focusing the groups thoughts on a concept. This is called preselling by sales people, anticipatory set by teachers, and framing the conversion by some. Memes are powerful tools for this framing.

"Memes proliferate as rapidly as kudzu to accommodate the new technologies and discoveries. Our words and images sometimes rise to international prominance as countries across the global neighborhood adopt the memes and and are influenced by their world-view or ideology." -V.C.

Think of blue jeans, rock and roll, the web, Google it, Twitter me, the cloud; and nannites, smaller than a human hair, the size of a dime, slow as a turtle, slum dogs; and outsourcing, illegal aliens, and trade. Think of deja vue, GPS, drugs, coke-a-cola, and cowboy. Who does not know at least one of these words even if no other English word is known?

The science shows on Discovery Channel and Science Channel all use memes and metaphores to foster visualization of the ideas that are being explained. These powerful tools are used to generate mental images that can be shaped by further words and images into an understanding of complex concepts. Voila, esoteric science concepts become more meaningful to non-expert audience. Educators now know that using memes and metaphors ease the student's route to expertise, too.

The Next Essay

The next essay in this series is on the new meme "Green." But don't stop there. Read an essay on memes in science fiction, too. Other essays are listed in the essay list. Take a look at my favorite visual meme for global warming. Enjoy.

Meme Enthusiasts

Memes are themes in essays on science fiction and poetry, photography and graphics throughout my sites.

Memes as themes can be seen at my Ning networks, CafePress estore, blogs and other sites. There are journals on memes at Zimbio. Visit to join in the fun.

And that is just a start. There are more essays to come.

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Teachable Moment with Toys

Ever think about how children learn? What memes do toys represent in a child's mind?

Play along with his mental associations, educating with values, skills, knowledge tidbits and attitudes as you play. Don't look for expert learning at this time, just an awareness of the memes to be learned and skills to be practiced as he grows.