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The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think
A cultural evolution scientist presents an outline of "meme," a distinct pattern of rapidly reproducing electrical charges in a brain node, citing their role in free will, human identity, consciousness, and society.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published July 2, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 28, 2008
Put simply, this book was boring and hard to follow. The theory of memetics, the possibility that ideas have a life of their own and can control their own destiny rather than rely solely on man for their evolution was a little too far-fetched for me to wrap my brain around. Reading GRAY'S ANATOMY would have been more interesting.
April 28, 2010
Memes are a fascinating idea made horribly dull by the author. He speaks around the subject for hundreds of pages, giving a history of the world, a remedial course on the brain and several other subjects. There is barely any discussion on memes.
Incredibly boring book. Read something else on memes if you are interested.
Incredibly boring book. Read something else on memes if you are interested.
October 11, 2014
Aunger presents an interesting theory - memes are brain states (electric spikes). It has a plausability about it. Of course, more empirical research needs to be done which Aunger is aware of. One question I have, is when replicating to another brain, how does it preform the same electric spark. I mean it seems like it would have to replicate in exactly the same way, unless it mutated on the way. Still, it is a more rich theory than others. Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are the ones I'm slightly familiar with. But, I haven't read any other books on memes. Overall, I found the book quite interesting. Some parts of it are less easily understood, but with effort I was able to comprehend pretty much.
July 17, 2018
This was a really strange book to me. It took me a while to understand what I think was Aunger's goal with the book-- to understand how evolutionary principles can be applied to culture-- instead of some of the other things the book could be about, like what are memes and how do they work. So, not quite knowing what he was up to, I read parts of this unsure what Aunger meant for me to be getting out of the book.
But even understanding Aunger's goals (if I do understand them), this is a really weird book. Again, my interest was in memes, how they circulate and mutate and ultimately make or don't make an impact. But Aunger's book isn't quite about that. I thought, early in my reading, that this was a topic that interested Aunger, too, that when he wondered what a meme was and if it even existed, he was arguing by definition, and I thought it was interesting. When he compared how memes replicate to how genes (and ultimately prions and computer viruses, which he weirdly calls "comp-viruses"), I thought it was a rhetorical strategy. But in both cases, it's not a strategy, really, but what Aunger really wonders.
He's a radical materialist, and if it can't be found, even if it is found in electrical impulses in the brain, it doesn't exist. So there's a lot of biology here, and some chemistry, to demystify the meme till its a "node" or cluster of neurons in the brain. And memes are one part of culture, alongside genes and artifacts, which is refreshingly modest and also kind of weirdly deflating. As I read, my reaction progressed from puzzled to I wondered why it mattered to pretty sure, around the time Aunger made up a new category of reactor (?) called instigator, that this wasn't quite my bag. When I want to know what a meme is, I wonder, is family loyalty a meme, or racism, or washing my hands, not whether it's one self-sustaining chain or neurons or a group of them.
In the end, I didn't get what I wanted out of this book. But I'm not sure it's me; it feels a lot here like Aunger dug into a rabbit hole that even he thinks isn't leading anywhere significant.
But even understanding Aunger's goals (if I do understand them), this is a really weird book. Again, my interest was in memes, how they circulate and mutate and ultimately make or don't make an impact. But Aunger's book isn't quite about that. I thought, early in my reading, that this was a topic that interested Aunger, too, that when he wondered what a meme was and if it even existed, he was arguing by definition, and I thought it was interesting. When he compared how memes replicate to how genes (and ultimately prions and computer viruses, which he weirdly calls "comp-viruses"), I thought it was a rhetorical strategy. But in both cases, it's not a strategy, really, but what Aunger really wonders.
He's a radical materialist, and if it can't be found, even if it is found in electrical impulses in the brain, it doesn't exist. So there's a lot of biology here, and some chemistry, to demystify the meme till its a "node" or cluster of neurons in the brain. And memes are one part of culture, alongside genes and artifacts, which is refreshingly modest and also kind of weirdly deflating. As I read, my reaction progressed from puzzled to I wondered why it mattered to pretty sure, around the time Aunger made up a new category of reactor (?) called instigator, that this wasn't quite my bag. When I want to know what a meme is, I wonder, is family loyalty a meme, or racism, or washing my hands, not whether it's one self-sustaining chain or neurons or a group of them.
In the end, I didn't get what I wanted out of this book. But I'm not sure it's me; it feels a lot here like Aunger dug into a rabbit hole that even he thinks isn't leading anywhere significant.
October 15, 2020
I wish I could review this book in separate parts, so I (kind of) will.
The first 177 pages of this book are some of the more interesting I've read from early memetic theory. As a quick, and perhaps overly simple summary memetics has two movements: (1) genetically analogous memetic theory and (2) an extension of communication/linguistic humor theory. While these have been sumarized by Shifman as being "mentalist" and "behaviorist" memetics, I've found that this is not exactly true.
For example, the first 177 pages of this book are committed to explaining that memetics is _material_ to replicators. But beyond that, it reduces culture to arguing memes are deterministic to the brain as chemical reactions in the brain that are inescapable from physical, unculturally related phenomena. The second half of the book may as well be reverting to interdisciplinary chemistry/neuroscience/genetics, and not culture.
That said, one of the most redeeming chapters of this book is the one on informational properties related to genetically analogous replicators. Perhaps this is the chapter that redeems the entire book. It spends a great deal of care explaining the distinctions in informational properties of memetics and simplifying a large set of theories related. However, at the point of publishing this book, many of these spaces were not empirically explained in Information studies departments, so anthropology was not quite ready to explain such subjects.
All in all, this book was before its time on certain subjects. That said, it jumps quickly into reducing to prior assumptions of unnecessarily scientific reduction. The logic of which the author supposes does not quite reduce memes to "brains" as quickly as this book would suggest. For example, one could easily explore "cinematic" minds from Deleuze's cinema (in the post-human sense), as a way to escape this as well as affect theoretic approaches. Such a reduction seems too aggressive and without clarity for someone who is publishing at a time that affect theory is beginning to thrive and explain post-human, new materialist culture.
The first 177 pages of this book are some of the more interesting I've read from early memetic theory. As a quick, and perhaps overly simple summary memetics has two movements: (1) genetically analogous memetic theory and (2) an extension of communication/linguistic humor theory. While these have been sumarized by Shifman as being "mentalist" and "behaviorist" memetics, I've found that this is not exactly true.
For example, the first 177 pages of this book are committed to explaining that memetics is _material_ to replicators. But beyond that, it reduces culture to arguing memes are deterministic to the brain as chemical reactions in the brain that are inescapable from physical, unculturally related phenomena. The second half of the book may as well be reverting to interdisciplinary chemistry/neuroscience/genetics, and not culture.
That said, one of the most redeeming chapters of this book is the one on informational properties related to genetically analogous replicators. Perhaps this is the chapter that redeems the entire book. It spends a great deal of care explaining the distinctions in informational properties of memetics and simplifying a large set of theories related. However, at the point of publishing this book, many of these spaces were not empirically explained in Information studies departments, so anthropology was not quite ready to explain such subjects.
All in all, this book was before its time on certain subjects. That said, it jumps quickly into reducing to prior assumptions of unnecessarily scientific reduction. The logic of which the author supposes does not quite reduce memes to "brains" as quickly as this book would suggest. For example, one could easily explore "cinematic" minds from Deleuze's cinema (in the post-human sense), as a way to escape this as well as affect theoretic approaches. Such a reduction seems too aggressive and without clarity for someone who is publishing at a time that affect theory is beginning to thrive and explain post-human, new materialist culture.
July 13, 2021
Culture somehow becomes even more wonderful and amazing, if perhaps more inscrutable, once memes are gone.
The study of the most complex evolutionary process we know - cultural evolution - still looms as one of the most significant and exhilarating undertakings in science today.
The study of the most complex evolutionary process we know - cultural evolution - still looms as one of the most significant and exhilarating undertakings in science today.
August 28, 2015
Quite possibly the most unpleasant book that I've ever come across.
The content, which is of indeterminate quality (I doubt anyone has ever read this without heavily skimming, so we don't know how informative it is), is completely lost because of how incredibly unpleasant it is to read. I don't think I've ever had this big of an issue with a book and I've read a lot of what people would consider perfectly unpleasant.
I wouldn't recommend this, or even wish it upon, anyone. Your time will be better spent on other books on this topic.
The content, which is of indeterminate quality (I doubt anyone has ever read this without heavily skimming, so we don't know how informative it is), is completely lost because of how incredibly unpleasant it is to read. I don't think I've ever had this big of an issue with a book and I've read a lot of what people would consider perfectly unpleasant.
I wouldn't recommend this, or even wish it upon, anyone. Your time will be better spent on other books on this topic.
April 27, 2013
This one's a slow read but does a great job of filling in the gap between memetics and semiotics. It does a DEEP dive into replication theory and will change the way that you think about thought and representation.
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May 29, 2008This is truly a fascinating idea, and the author is excellent at presenting the possibility without getting ahead of the science that doesn't yet exist.
July 24, 2014
This book was so incredibly dull and hard to follow. The idea of memetics was incredibly exciting to me, and Robert Aunger has sucked the interest right out of the subject.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews