One fine lazy Sunday afternoon, sometime in the gap between graduation and joining IIM Calcutta, I finally decided to sit down with my copy of Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, a book which had come highly recommended from my brother. While the concept of the selfish gene as propounded by Dawkins is all well and good, what really made me sit up and take notice was the concept of the Meme. Not only did it sound a lot like my nickname (Mimmie) but it actually unitized the process of idea transfer.

We humans have an inherent tendency to interpret the world as we see it, which is of course not always how it really is. In keeping with understanding the world as we view it, imagery and metaphorical understanding of phenomena is something that most people find easy to grasp. However, such methods tend to capture only partial information and the usage of only a single metaphor would stunt the conceptual understanding of whoever uses it. The concept of the Meme is a good metaphor for understanding learning as propagation. Memes are not only similar in pronunciation with genes but most meme theorists also equate them in nature as well. Memes are carriers of learning while genes are carriers of characteristics. While genes carry information from genraton to generation, memes carry information across the same biological generation.

So how does this meme thing work anyway? Imagine a tiny little virus like “creature” called a Meme floating about in my head. The Meme is essentially an idea, usually a cultural one.  Kolkata is sweltering these days at 38 degrees and 97% humidity. So I happened to feel that the AC classrooms are no longer that bad a place to be. So I send out a message on IIM Calcutta’s internal IP messenger to the 200 odd student users saying “Putclass” is the new solution to this heat!” So a new addition happens to the ever increasing and unique IIM Calcutta lingo, “Putclass“. In the next 2 days this Idea or Meme for the new word may propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while another Meme may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. The meme would essentially transmit itself virus-like from my mind through the messenger and afflict the minds of whoever read my message. The propagation of the meme depends entirely in whether my idea catches on or not.

The meme has become even more powerful in the modern context with the advent of blogs, email and other forms of instant communication. The very nature of such impulsive communication gels well with the very nature of the meme itself, flitting from host to host at the speed of terabytes. Memetic learning can be best exemplified by the popularity of Internet chat lingo. Chat lingo has caught up with users around the world at a ridiculous pace. Given that the English language, itself a fast evolving “borrowed” language, took hundreds of years to emerge in a distinctly different from it’s Anglo-Saxonic and Germanic roots, chat language as already begun that journey in only a few years.

If I just take a look at this blog itself, then Strat.in is a meme that circulated among Siddhesh, Atul, Abhiram, Shubham and co initially, went on to catch my fancy shortly afterwards and is now generating the tremendous response that will have bloggers from all over the world contributing soon. Strat. In itself serves as a platform for more memes as well. The readers of this Blog beware, you are about to catch memes with every article!

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