The Internet And The Memes

Added: 06/27/2007

To some, the Internet is all about the memes. Whatever form they might take, the Internet is an incredibly powerful tool for find new cultural ideas, new songs, catchphrases, jokes, knowledge on just about any subject you can imagine. The Internet has allowed Richard Dawkins' idea to leap to new heights, and memetic transmission has become one of the cornerstones of the Information Super Highway.

In any discussion about the memes of the Internet, we first need a decent explanation of what examply a meme is. The meme is a modern concept, crafted by famed biologist Richard Dawkins in his classic 1976 book, “The Selfish Gene.” Dawkins described memes as a cultural analog to the gene, a basic unit of cultural information which could take the form of a tune, a catch phrase, fashion ideas, manufacturing methods, religious and philosophical concepts: anything you can think of. Whereas a gene might contain information about eye color, or how many joints an animal contains in its limbs, biological data, the meme is the basic unit of societal data.

As word of mouth is the most common distribution method for memes, it is no surprise that the Internet has taken such a massive role in the world of memetic transmission. After all, there is no denser source of information or faster form of communication than the World Wide Web. The memes of the Internet travel fast and furiously; sometimes this is an intended result, sometimes it is merely accidental.

The memes found on the Internet could be related to culture from anywhere in the world, more often they are part of the unique culture which the Internet has created itself. Cyberspace is a realm unknown before at any time in human history, and it has crafted for itself a unique culture, ranging from new slang (BTW, LOL, ROTFLMAO, IMHO, etc., etc., etc.,), its own idols, its own heroes, its own villains.

On the Internet you can find memes about anything you can imagine. Some sites, such as the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, even list meme directories, where you can find out about some of the most popular memes to grace the Internet over the years. The concept of wiki and wikipedia itself are even a prime example of the meme, this basic unit of cultural transmission.

For some, the memes are a purely Internet phenomena, as they have played such a massive role in the world of online communication, however the Internet has only been the most visible and successful distributor of memetic data. (Under more traditional forms memes travel much more slowly, even on radio and through television, so its work cannot always be seen as clearly as it can on the Internet).

The greatest tool in the finding of the memes of the Internet is of course the search engine. The world of the Internet is so incredibly vast that without search engines finding new memetic concepts would have to happen almost by accident, whereas with the search engine memetic information can be brought to the user in a split-second.

This technology makes it much easier for users of the Internet to keep up with everything that is going on in Internet culture. In such a fast-paced world the culture can seem to literally change overnight, this is in fact a product of the fast and furious memetic transmission going on. By the same token, it is this same efficient and incredibly fast method of data transfer that also allows its users to interact with the memes themselves and thus keep up to date on changes in language and cultural norms.

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