The Meme Machine

58 THE MEME MACHINE
that only digital systems can support evolution. Certainly genes are digital and
certainly digital storage is far preferable to analogue. We all know that digital
video- and audio-recordings look and sound better than their analogue
predecessors; a digital system allows information to be stored and transmitted
with far less loss of information even over noisy channels. However, there is no
law that says that evolution has to be digitally based – the issue is really one of
the quality of replication.
What, then, makes for a good quality replicator? Dawkins (1976) sums it up
in three words – fidelity, fecundity and longevity. This means that a replicator
has to be copied accurately, many copies must be made, and the copies must last
a long time – although there may be trade-offs between the three. Genes do well
on all three counts, and being digital gives them high fidelity copying. So what
about brains?
Our memory is obviously good enough for us to learn several languages,
recognise thousands of photographs from one showing, and recall the major
events of our lives over periods of decades. Is this good enough to support
memetic evolution? I think this is an empirical question that could be put to the
test. In the future, memeticists might be able to develop mathematical models to
determine just how high the fidelity of memory must be to support memetic
evolution, and compare that with the known performance of human memes. My
guess is that our memories will be found to be quite good enough, whether they
ultimately turn out to be digital or not.
Second, memes depend on being transmitted from one person to another and,
by definition, this is done by imitation. We have already seen how poorly
understood imitation is but we may at least make a simple prediction. Actions
that are easy to imitate will make for successful memes and ones that are
difficult to imitate will not.
Apart from that, the effective transmission of memes depends critically on
human preferences, attention, emotions and desires – in other words, the stuff of
evolutionary psychology. For genetic reasons we are driven by the desire for
sex, for sex of different kinds, for food, for better food, for avoiding danger and
for excitement and power. Evolutionary psychology already provides us with
lots of information that explains why some memes are picked up again and again
while others make no impact. We need to use that information and build on it.
To conclude – it is true that we do not understand in detail how memes are
stored and transmitted. But we have plenty of clues and we certainly know
enough to get started.