The Meme Machine

28 THE MEME MACHINE
human race’ (Basalla 1988). In true Darwinian fashion he sees technology as
developing only from the present situation with very limited specific goals and
suggests we discard the entire illusion of technological progress. But I would
add here another word of caution concerning the word ‘progress’. The word can
be used in at least two different ways. One implies progress towards some goal
or objective; the other implies only increasing design, increasing complexity, or
any kind of continuous development without a particular goal or end point built
in. Basalla, like Gould, throws out both kinds of progress. I would throw out
only the first. Today’s technology is far more sophisticated and complex than
that of 10000 years ago, and that is progress of the second kind. But, there is no
progress towards some predetermined or ultimate goal. We did not have to go
from stone axes to fax machines – we did have to go from stone axes to
something more specialised, more designed and more improbable. In Dennett’s
terminology, there has been ever more exploration of the Design Space of
possible artefacts. In Dawkins’s terminology, technology has been slowly
climbing its own Mount Improbable. This is technological progress, if not
progress towards anything in particular.
So why do we have fax machines? Why Coca Cola cans and wheelybins?
Why Windows 98 and felt-tip pens? I want answers to these specific questions.
‘Because we want them’ is not a sufficient answer. ‘Because we need them’ is
clearly untrue. If we want to understand how the fantastic complexity of our
technological world came about it is not enough just to say that technology
evolves, without providing a mechanism. In later chapters I shall explain how a
memetic approach can help.
Scientific ideas also evolve and there have been many theories that attempt to
explain them. The influential philosopher Karl Popper, in one of his best known
contributions to the philosophy of science, suggested that scientific knowledge is
gained by the falsification of hypotheses, not by accumulating proof or evidence
for theories. Science can then be seen as a competitive struggle between rival
hypotheses in which only some survive.
Popper also applied Darwinian thinking in this three ‘cosmic evolutionary
stages’: World 1 is the world of physical objects such as trees, tables and human
bodies; World 2 is the world of subjective experiences including feelings,
emotions and consciousness; and World 3 is the world of ideas; of language and
stories, works of art and technology, mathematics and science. World 3 is
largely autonomous, even though created by us (Popper 1972), and its contents
have effects on the other worlds by a kind of downward causation. So, for
example, scientific theories may appear as World 1 objects (the scientist, the