1. 2 Features of meme
About meme’s features, Dawkins supplied three points: (a) Copying-fidelity: the more faithful the copy is, the more the original text can be conversed. For example, if a picture’ s copy is from reproduction to reproduction, instead from the original version, then the more times for copying, the more unfaithful. (b) Fecundity: the faster for copying, the more persons to copy. (c) Longevity: The longer time for copying style’s existence, the more persons to copy. It is easy to see that the image on the sands can not exist for long, so it is hard to copy.
1. 3 Reproduction of meme
Memes are carried by transmitters, so meme’s spread is also called copying, which is: a meme’s version is copied to another individual’s memory, making him/her as a carrier. The course of copying enlarges the group of carriers and makes memes become replicators like genes. In Francis Heylighen’s view, it needs four periods for meme’s reproduction.
1. 3. 1 Assimilation
An effective meme can infect the recipient. For instance, a meme appears in front of a new possible receiver, where “appears” means that one person realizes the meme’s carrier or he/she discovers the meme by watching outside phenomenon, or thinking (rearranging the existing cognitive elements). Assimilation refers to the meme appearing is noticed, understood and accepted by the receptor. By notice, it means that the carrier of the appearing meme is obvious enough to attract the recipient. By understanding, it means that the recipient can accept the meme and store it in his cognition system. Not any thought can intervene into people’s mentality, for it is not that blank. Understanding means that some new idea or phenomenon is possible to connect with the existing cognition system of a person. If someone tells you that the car you are driving is made by Martians, though this expression is not hard to comprehend, will you believe it? You are not likely to believe it without evidence. Therefore, you won’t remember the expression and can’t be infected by it.
1. 3. 2 Retention
The second stage is about the time for meme’s reserving in one’s memory. According to the definition, meme must live in memory, or it isn’t an actual meme. The longer time it stays, the more chances it has to infect the recipients. This is just one of meme’s features---longevity.
The same as assimilation, retention is under rigorous selection, so only a majority of memes can survive. The majority of what we hear, see or feel just stays for a few hours in our memory. For instance, we hear or see really the quarrel between Morocco and Spain about a nameless island, but it’s hard for us to remember it after several months, except we have experienced the quarrel. Whether one remembers one thing depends on its importance and frequency of its appearance. All the experience of studying shows that repeating is the mother of memory.
1. 3. 3 Expression
In order to spread widely, memes must transform from memory style to visible pattern easily to be cognized by recipients. Such a transformation is “expression”, of which the most notable way is no more than speech. And there are other ways of expression such as composition, picture, and behavior. It does not need the vector to do something deliberately, for the style of people’s walking and doing things and their dressing are all the expressions of meme.
Some memes may not be expressed forever. For example, some vector does not think a meme is attracting, so he probably use it subconsciously without any exterior expression, or does not know how to express it, or just wants it to be a secret. On the contrary, if the vector considers the meme so important that he will express it to anyone he meets.
1. 3. 4 Transmission
Transmitting to another receptor needs a visible vector or medium, which should be stable as to ensure the expression’s transmission not too fuzzy or deforming. Such as in speeches, the voice is used to transmit expressions while in articles, paper, ink and E-pluse are used. Expressions represent as visible signals, which are first materialized the meme, then explains and produce them, realizing the transmission. These visible signals can be called the meme vehicle, such as books, photos, crafts or CD-ROMs.
In the period of transmission, selecting meme’s vector is realized by deleting some other memes’ vector. Such as meme’s vector has been destroyed or damaged, or transmitted by a variety of ways before it accepted by another recipient; or the vector is reproduced to many kinds of versions; or the scripts are possible to thrown into shredders or published in a big volume. Wireless telecommunication may disappear due to noise or broadcast to thousands of people. Especially the appearance of mass media makes the success and the failure of meme’s transmission are totally contrary, so the selecting of meme’s vector appears to be more important.
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