In defense of "Memesis"

by Francis Heylighen




The following are some remarks about the document: "Memesis : the Future of
Evolution" and replies to some of the earlier criticisms of this documents.

Let me first state that I am not an artist or literary critic, but a
scientist, doing research about the theory and praxis of the network
revolution. As such, most of the criticisms of the "Memesis" text strike me
as based on misunderstandings of what concepts like "evolution" and "memes"
really mean. It is true that the Memesis text is not very coherent and
makes some bold statements without much argumentation. Yet, I believe it
indicates some very important developments, which affect all of us.

Few people have any grasp of the wide-ranging implications of the on-going
"cyber" revolution. Therefore it is easy to say that all this is mere hype,
which no self respecting intellectual should take seriously. But beyond all
the hype, there is a very real phenomenon which will transform everything
we know in ways beyond anybody's imagination. I will here not expound my
vision of what the future may bring: I reserve that for the text I am
writing for the Memesis Catalogue. I just would like to criticize some of
the earlier criticisms.

Richard Barbrook:
> In this century, millions of
>people were shoved into gas chambers because
>it was believed that they possessed 'genes
>that are not able to cope' as the Memesis
>statement puts it. Following the defeat of
>fascism, the biological metaphor is now more
>often used to revive an earlier illegitimate
>use of Darwinian theory for political
>purposes: Social Darwinism.

Simon Penny:
>More recently there has been evidence of a return to techno-utopianism
>and questionable scientisms, the latter most clearly in evidence in the
>way that certain artifical life researchers have utilised a somewhat
>dated and very narrow notion of 'evolution'. As has been resoundingly
>argued by Richard Barbrook, the technological re-validation of such
>ideas paves the way for new waves of social darwinism and other
>retrogressive ideas.

This is the kind of argument with which you can demolish any position.
Hitler was a Christian, so religion leads to the gas chambers. Stalin was
an atheist, so atheism leads to extermination, etc. The fact that some
people at some point have misused an idea does not in any way prove that
that idea is wrong or evil. I don't know whether the argument is
"resounding" but it is certainly not convincing.

Another misunderstanding is apparent in the equation of "evolution" with
"biological evolution". The essence of the meme idea is just that evolution
no longer takes places on the level of the genes, but on the level of
culture. The fact that memes evolve according to principles of variation
and selection very similar to the principles governing Darwinian evolution
of genes does not in any way lead to Social Darwinism in its old sense.
Variation and selection are principles of such general validity that
calling them the "biological metaphor" is more obscuring than illuminating.

Simon Penny:
>In the second paragraph we read:
>"Human evolution is fundamentally intertwined with technological development".
>
>I would have thought this was demonstrably _not_ the case, almost every
>aspect of human physiology has remained stable over thousands of years,
>let alone during the pitifully few generations of industrialisation.
>Humanity has _not_  co-evolved with its artifacts in any biological
>sense. This is precisely the argument _for_ the obsolescence of
>evolution as argued by Stelarc et al. Survival into the next millenium
>depends not on whether genes will 'co-evolve with... artifacts' but
>whether they can survive the effects of those artifacts.

As usual, I guess truth lies somewhere in the middle: human (biological)
evolution is neither really dependent nor really independent of
technological development. Simon Penny is correct in saying that almost
every aspect of human physiology has remained stable, but that does not
exclude the fact that in the hundred thousand years or so that humanity has
been using tools, this use has not had an effect on the frequency of
particular genes. E.g. the use of spears or other weapons for throwing may
have led to a better hand-eye coordination, and have stimulated the
development of specialised brain centers for anticipating movements in
three dimensional space. I agree that these kinds of genetic effects are
relatively minor and that the Memesis statement: "...genes that are not
able to cope with this reality will not survive the next millenium." seems
rather exaggerated.

A much more important phenomenon is the effect *cultural* evolution will
have. Indirectly, cultural evolution may even control genetic evolution. We
already see the first applications of biotechnology to the "repair" of
genes repsonsible for inherited diseases. Perhaps, the "Memesis" statement
should be understood in that sense: that humanity itself will develop the
power and the will to manipulate its own genes, throwing out those that are
not adapted to the new cultural-technological landscape. Still, the
statement is way too categoric.


Simon Penny:
>In the third we read: "...global networks as the ultimate habitat for
>the human mind".
>
[...]
>Seriously though, it baffles me that this rhetoric of 'transcendence via
>the net' did not die a quick death a decade ago. Doesn't anybody realise
>just how corny and retrograde the notion is? Its Plato's Ur-world of
>Ideals and Christian Heaven all wrapped up together with Cybernetic
>Mumbo-Jumbo.

Again, this is the kind of argument with which you can prove anything. The
fact that an idea is similar to an idea that can be found in Plato, in the
Bible or in Medieval Scholasticism does not in any way mean that it is
false. In the Bible it is said that you should not kill or steal: what a
retrograde idea! I don't understand it did not die centuries ago.

>It is just one facet of a general argument against the body, which has
>been an ongoing characteristic of western philosophy and christian
>theology. As I noted in a previous essay (1992) : "William Gibson's
>Cyberpunks procalimed "the body is meat" but they did not pause to note
>how similar their position was to that of St Augustine".

But on the other hand the "Memesis" text mentions "neurobionic, robotic
prosthetics question our relationship to the body and gender; cyborg theory
and and cyberbody fetish as response". The cybernetic revolution does not
in any way deny the essential function of the body, it rather explores it
further, developing extensions to the body.

As somebody working in cybernetics (not the SF stuff everybody speaks
about, but the real scientific discipline), I can tell you that the essence
of cybernetics is just that the mind can only exist *because* it interacts,
via the body, with the outside world. The development of a "global mind"
emerging from the networks does not contradict this idea, since any network
that is worth mentioning still connects to the real world via sensors and
effectors of some kind.

>- is the net the progenitor of a 'world-mind' or super-consciousness?
>[This question]  introduces the spectre of a fascism veiled in
>mystico-techno-biological jargon.

Again the use of words like "fascism" is a cheap way to create a negative
image without argumentation.

>Just what might this super-consciousness transpire to be? I offer
>several possibilities:
>
> 1. It might be intentionally built (cf " Evolutionary Systems for Brain
>Communications: Towards an Artificial Brain" Katsunori Shimohara,
>Artificial Life 4 conference, MIT June 1994).
>1.1 if it were built, it might do the bidding of its designers (which
>would be ok if you were on their side), or
>1.2 it might go feral.
>
>2.It might arise spontaneously. Readers are probably familiar with
>speculations that the net might be getting complex enough for some kind
>of consciousness to arise according to the principle of stigmurgy.
>
>If 1.2 or 2 its unlikely that it would have human interests at heart. It
>might render the net useless for human purposes, or worse, see humans as
>competitors, and attempt to wipe them out. Our only recourse would be to
>close the net down entirely.

>3. More than one might arise. Colusion or warfare, neither would be
>particularly useful to people.

These are extremely important and interesting questions, which I have tried
to address in a number of publications. These issues are very complicated
and subtle. Although Simon Penny's questions are excellent to attract the
attention to the problem, they are a little too simplistic to be useful in
tackling it. Let me just propose another metaphor: you might see the
"superconsciousness" as a multicellular organism, and the individual humans
as its cells. In this view, there is obviously no sense in the super-mind
"wiping out" humans. There might be some form of  competition  between
levels, as there undoubtedly has been during the evolution of multicellular
organisms, but nothing comparable to warfare.

>A pitfall of techno-utopianism is that it encourages one to imagine that
>a particular technological moment is so new and so different that one
>cannot learn from historical precedents. I have observed in the past
>that sucessive waves of technologies, particularly media technologies,
>have been heralded into the world with utopian rhetorics, all of which
>proved to be more or less in opposition to the later applications and
>outcomes of the technology.

That danger is certainly there. However, trying to understand new
technological developments by looking at previous evolution is exactly the
opposite of ignoring historical precedents.

>Many scientifically validated notions, such as "evolution",
>'relativity', 'entropy' and more recently 'chaos' have been applied to
>humanistic discourses over the last century, generally to questionable
>result, as Herbert Hrachovec has suggested.

Again, I agree that lots of scientific notions have been misinterpreted in
the most diverse ways. That does not mean that one should stop using
concepts deriving from scientific developments. I do not believe that
"humanistic discourse" is so essentially different from scientific
discourse that the one cannot learn from the other.



________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Francis Heylighen, Systems Researcher       fheyligh@vnet3.vub.ac.be
PESP, Free University of Brussels, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium
Tel +32-2-6292525; Fax +32-2-6292489;