The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "These apparently unrelated vignettes, recounting events from varied times and places, all involve the transmission of information-in biological, cultural, or electronic form..." (more)
Key Phrases: Replicator Theory, Richard Dawkins, Same Influence Rule (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his defining book, The Selfish Gene, Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins sought to describe cultural evolution in biological terms with the newly coined term "meme," a metaphorical information particle that replicates itself as people exchange information, as the cultural equivalent of the gene, the replicating agent of biological evolution. Here, Cambridge anthropologist Aunger (Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science) theorizes on the nature of this so-called "thought gene." In doing so, Aunger coins a term of his own, "neuromemetics," proposing that memes are in fact self-replicating electrical charges in the nodes of our brains. The author explains that the shift in perspective from Dawkins's purely social memetics to a memetics working at the intercellular level is akin to sociobiology's view of social behavior as a genetic trait subject to evolution. This is an ambitious book on a par with Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine. Unlike the handful of pop-culture treatments out there, Aunger steers clear of the popular image of the meme as a VD-like brain parasite passed by word of mouth. That said, this book is that rare hybrid of crossover science writing that carries enough intellectual punch to warrant thoughtful peer review, and yet should appeal to those ambitious general readers who are in the market for a megadose of mind candy.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...The most erudite and penetrating book yet written on memes. Potentially, it heralds the beginning of a new science." -- Terrence W. Deacon, Boston University, author of THE SYMBOLIC SPECIES

"Be warned...: your memes may never be the same again." -- Marc D. Hauser, Harvard University, author of WILD MINDS

"THE ELECTRIC MEME will eclipse as the inaugural book of a whole new school of social science and cultural history." -- Daniel Dennett, Tufts University, author of CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED and DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA

"What more...needed to be said about memes? ...Plenty, and Robert Aunger says it clearly, intelligently and entertainingly." -- Richard Dawkins, Oxford University, author of THE SELFISH GENE

Terrence W. Deacon Boston University, author of The Symbolic Species Sometimes it can take a generation for a simple concept to be clearly articulated...This is without question the most erudite and penetrating book yet written on memes. Potentially, it heralds the beginning of a new science. -- Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (July 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743201507
• ISBN-13: 978-0743201506
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #665,208 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genesis of a real science of culture transmission, July 4, 2002

By	Todd I. Stark "Cellular Wetware plus Books" (Philadelphia, Pa USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Memes," the suggestion that ideas and other bits of culture can act like parasites by spreading from mind to mind without regard to the invaded host is a particularly compelling idea. It has caught on with a lot of people outside of biological science, but biologists have been generally skeptical of it. The problem has been that theories of memes did not take the characteristics of the host into consideration, and we have a strong sense from biological data that the host of transmitted information probably has to have some control over the processing of the information that they receive and transmit. The notion that our obvious strong propensity for social imitation also allows memes to enter us almost without resistance, then control us to force us to spread them seems a bit much.

Aunger has formulated the meme theory in a way that resolves these problems. He is very careful in his reasoning compared to other popular books on memes and cultural transmission. He shows why cultural transmission is important, pulling from some of the same fascinating data as cultural selectionism researchers such as Boyd and Richerson. Cultural transmission matters because culture doesn't track with environmental, ecological, or genetic patterns. He then makes the crucial distinction for a true meme theory. He distinguishes the idea of a replicator and a duplication mechanism, and builds a model of memes specifically as replicators.

Cultural selection theory holds that culture plays a role in biological evolution, but doesn't neccessarily consider bits of culture tobe composed of self-copying replicators. The reason the distinction is important, Aunger makes clear, is that if they truly can be seen in that way, then they add an additional causal force for culture to take on a life of its own to transmit itself through us. This is the causal force that other meme authors have taken for granted, and Aunger makes it explicit and potentially testable.

In building his model of memes, Aunger finds that the definition can and should be made more specific, as a kind of complex residing in the brain rather than an arbitrary collection of artifacts, behaviors, and ideas. This model of memes gets around the problem of beliefs not being truly arbitrary by making it at least possible to connect the acceptance of memes back to our evolved computational engines as described by evolutionary psychologists.

This is a very rigorous and well-considered argument that finally takes real anthropological and biological data into consideration rather than simply making vague analogies of culture patterns to infection patterns of microbes, or providing a too-facile explanation for things we don't agree with (those guys were just infected by "religion memes," but we're immunized from that.")

I think this book is a landmark in the literature of modelling the transmission of human culture, and if the empirical testing it suggests bears fruit, it may well change the way we view human belief in general and have significant implications to epistemology.

On the downside, while this book is non-technical, it is academic in tone and is unlikely to have the same popular appeal as Brodie's dramatic "Virus of the Mind" or Susan Blackmore's very provocative "Meme Machine." On the other hand, it heralds a potential start for a real science of memetics, addressing the truly important questions (such as "do we have memes or do they have us ?") which those others books attempted to answer but assumed the answer from the start rather than framing the question in empirically testable terms and a more specific definition of a meme, potentially telling us how well memes act act as true replicators.

39 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Instigation is double-speak, July 19, 2002

By	Andrew Chen "chenandr" (Fargo, ND USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a great book and models something totally different from what I conceived of as a meme. In fact, it redefines memes to something potentially relevant but even more inaccessible before. It's notion of what a "meme" is winds up being a tiny little fragment of a thought, so that something like a word or a idea or a sensation wouldn't actually be a meme, but a collection of them.

My big gripe (but it isn't that big) is that when the author seeks to avoid the problems with how memes transfer between brains, he winds up saying that they don't - they merely create conditions suitable for the recreation of the meme in the other brain. From my point of view, this is double-speak - to paraphrase the book, it says something like "they're not being transferred, because there are problems with memes being transferred, but they are being transferred, but we're not calling it that". This would basically mean that memes don't really get transferred, and that there's a definite possibility of those conditions not leading to recreation of the meme in the other brain. I guess that's what happens when people "misunderstand" each other.

I applaud him for realizing the value of context in understanding what a meme is - not just spatial and cognitive context, but also temporal context - but the "instigator" double-speak is enough to prevent me from calling this a five star.

What I think he means is that memes can only be understood in their context and that meme transfer involves and requires significant amounts of common context in order to be successful. I wish he just said that instead of the rambling on-and-on about "instigators".

This is definitely a book worth looking at. I wouldn't recommend reading the whole thing if you've read any other books on memes or memetics - just use the introduction and table of contents to determine the relevant chapters for you. The only people who should read the whole thing are patient people who haven't heard much about memetics or who don't mind re-reading much similar material.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Design of Communication, July 12, 2002

By	Charles Nix (New York City) - See all my reviews

In this excellent volume Aunger presents a clear and convincing argument. The meme is placed squarely in the brain, safely recreating itself, allowing all that goes on outside of the brain to be viewed in a fresh perspective. Aunger's clear explanations of concepts like signal correction, signal redundancy, and artifacts as repositories of memes should prove invaluable to those involved with the design of communication.