nettime: a meme is a meme is a meme

[Pit Schultz <pit@contrib.de>]

a meme is a meme is a meme

what happens if one applies memesis to memesis? --
It appears as a hungry media virus which carries
just enough theory to become popular. 
memesis = cultural infection. In the past, like
meat and vegetables, culture and nature were two
different things. Now they merge together as 
biotechnoculture to feed the need for sensational
social system errors. We recall an old German idiom:
'the most stupid farmer grows the biggest potatoes.'
the supreme meme turns culture into a data-jungle
where so called 'information' is not based on
difference and repetition, but on the question of
dead or alive. What follows is the legitimation of
'Kulturkampf' under a 'natural law'. Did you already
have your little cyber-war today?
take genetics: with the new tools of Bio-IT, 
darwinism will fade away -one will soon be able
to edit evolution. Heck, this is techno-lamarckism!
Meanwhile a billion virtual monkeys-on-typewriters
are trying to break the being-human code, designing
new super-algorithms, browse through the web instead
of us, and do everything that little helpful gremlins
do. the neo-vitalists like to achieve a cultural
technology that feels as good as orgasm, but instead
they are planting the same old totem: male memesis
as reproduction without secretion.
the problem with cultural fashions is not that they
appear but that they don't last long enough. (U. Eco)

# Pit Schultz, Kleine Hamburger Str. 15, 10117 Berlin, pit@contrib.de


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