Abstract
We humans are meme machines. So are printing presses, telephones,
photocopiers, computers and web servers. Memes are habits, skills,
technologies and stories, that are copied from person to person by
imitation. Like genes, memes are replicators. That is, they are
information that is copied with variation and selection. They
therefore give rise to a new evolutionary process. As with other
evolutionary processes, memetic evolution happens for the benefit of
the replicators themselves, and not for our benefit.
I shall outline the basic theory of memetics and
discuss how it provides a new vision human evolution, with novel
explanations for the traditional mysteries of the enormous human brain
and the uniquely human capacity for language. These are all products
of the co-evolution between memes and the machinery that copies them.
