The Meme Machine

Preface
This book owes its existence to an illness. In September 1995 I caught a nasty
virus, and struggled to keep working until I was finally forced to give up and
take to my bed. I stayed there for many months, unable to walk more than a few
steps, unable to talk for more than a few minutes, unable to use my computer –
in fact unable to do anything but read and think.
During this time I began on my pile of ‘urgent books I must read this week’
which has long been oppressing me. One of them was Dan Dennett’s latest
book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. At about the same time one of my PhD
students, Nick Rose, wrote me an essay on ‘Memes and Consciousness’.
Somehow the meme meme got to me. I had read Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene
many years before but, I suppose, had dismissed the idea of memes as nothing
more than a bit of fun. Suddenly I realised that here was a powerful idea,
capable of transforming our understanding the human mind – and I hadn’t even
noticed it. I then read everything I could find on memes. Since I had to refuse
all invitations to give lectures, take part in television programmes, go to
conferences, or write papers, I could devote myself properly to the study of
memes.
Most of the ideas in this book came to me while I was lying in bed during
those months, especially between January and March 1996. As I gradually got
better I began to make extensive notes. Some two years after I first became ill I
was well enough to work again, and decided to keep on saying no to all those
invitations, and to write this book instead.
I would like to thank the illness for making it possible, and my children
Emily and Jolyon for not, apparently, minding that their mother was uselessly
lying in bed all the time. I would like to thank my partner Adam Hart-Davis for
not only looking after me when I was ill, but for encouraging my enthusiasm for
memes in every way possible and for putting ‘the book’ first.
Dan Dennett was one of the first to hear my ideas and I thank him for his
‘avuncular advice’. Several people helped greatly by reading earlier drafts of all
or part of the book. They are Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Derek Gatherer,