... a completely non-genetic type of replicator, which flourishes only in the environment provided by complex, communicating brains. I called it the 'meme'.[...]
"I was insufficiently clear about the distinction between the meme itself as replicator on the one hand and its 'phenotypic effects' or 'meme products' on the other. A meme should be regarded as a unit of information residing in a brain.[...]
"The phenotypic effects of a meme may be in the form of words, music, visual images, styles of clothes, facial or hand gestures, skills such as opening milk bottles in tits, or panning wheat in Japanese macaques.[...]
Dawkins later quotes correspondence between Wallace and Darwin, wherein Wallace suggests that Spencer's term 'survival of the fittest' is clearer and less question-begging than Darwin's 'Natural Selection'. Darwin liked this new phenotypic expression for his meme, but he said:
the term Natural Selection has now been so largely used abroad and at home that I doubt whether it could be given up, and with all its faults I should be sorry to see the attempt made. Whether it will be rejected must now depend on the 'survival of the fittest'...
Dawkins parenthetically notes "Darwin clearly understood the meme principle".
I can sympathise or at least empathise with Winer though. Too often the best storyteller for a particular audience can win out over someone who is constrained to telling the truth. A current example is the DRM debacle. Any competent engineer knows that the notion of locking up content from those who purchase it and view it on their own computers is technically impossible (setting aside the moral bankruptcy for a minute). The 'content owners' so much want this to be true that they are creating a market for snake-oil that appears to give them what they dream of. Which I suppose is poetic justice of a sort.
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