Links


Fun links

Enjoy the Replicators’ Song !!

Is the Internet really ruining your brain?

Great memes cartoon wins free expression prize


Serious Links

There are lots of websites dealing with memes but many are completely confusing, some downright misleading, and some total rubbish. I have listed here those that I find useful, roughly in the order in which I would recommend them to people who want to learn about the scientific study of memes and the field of memetics.

Principia Cybernetica – part of this project deals with memes and the site is maintained by Francis Heylighen. Includes reliable definitions and discussions, links, academic papers and Glenn Grant’s memetic lexicon.

Journal of Memetics: Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission – The only journal devoted entirely to memetics. Includes a history of memetics and bibliography. The old journal closed in 2005 but still maintains an archive of its papers. The new incarnation of JoM includes new papers and general information on memes.

Meme Central – This is Richard Brodie’s site “the center of the world of memetics”, with FAQs, a free newsletter, lots on viruses of the mind, and useful links.

Memetics Publications on the Web – The best source for scientific and academic papers, sadly no longer up to date (goes up to 2002).

Free Dictionary – includes definitions, history, evolution and other topics such as memetic engineering.

Wikipedia – as usual for Wikipedia, a thorough overview for both meme andmemetics

Church of Virus – “a memetically engineered atheistic religion” using memetics to build a new, rational religion and answer such big questions as what does it all mean and why am I here? With sins, virtues and saints, as well as books and links.

Memes.org –  Definitions, articles and books for sale.

Spiral dynamics. A system based on the work of Clare Graves that uses memes terminology but in a completely different way from Dawkins’s original idea. The differences are explained on their site.