Intro to memetics

Introduction to memetics ----

Memetics began as a civilian theory, the meme was defined as a unit of culture by Richard Dawkins. Various civilian applications for memetics have been developed in the last two decades, eventually leading to the innovation of militarized memetic warfare.

Memetic warfare was developed by the United States beginning in 2005 with a report conducted by Dr. Robert Finkelstein of Robotic Technology Inc. for DARPA the Defense advanced research projects agency. The concept was adopted by the US and members of the intelligence and defense communities developed a framework for a militarized memetics program. As a result, new applications and strategies for memetic engineering have been developed which can give CEO’s and Executives the tools to produce measurable increases in revenue.

To the average social media user, a meme is roughly defined as a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users. To the archeologist a meme could be an ancient hieroglyph and to the western reductionist science, a meme is an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.

From a military memetics standpoint “A meme consists of information which persists, propagates, and influences human behavior.” (Finkelstein) Military organizational structure works well at leveraging teamwork and human psychology to accelerate the replication of memes. When the advanced principles of a military memetics program are applied to business, companies can become optimized to perform better and benefit from the data economy.