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Meme Cooperation on the Net: toward a Global Brain?

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· · · · · ·  A E C  F O R U M - "M E M E S I S" · · · · ·
· · · · · · ·  (http://www.aec.at/meme/symp/) · · · · · ·
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Apparently, lots of people are still painting the most frightening pictures
of what would happen if evolutionary theory would be applied to culture. In
addition to the Social Darwinism/eugenics thread, another common
misunderstanding is that the biological metaphor implies extreme
liberalism, where there is no room for solidarity or cooperation.

The following discussion, which comes largely from my contribution to the
Ars Electronica Catalog, argues that collectivity and synergy are essential
for any "organism"-like system. In addition, it argues that the emerging
global network will reinforce this tendency to develop cooperating wholes,
culminating in the emergence of a "global brain". As such, it tries to make
a connection between the twin themes of memes/evolution and
cybernetics/electronic networks that characterize the Memesis symposium

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Discussions about memes, and about evolutionary systems in general, usually
emphasize competition, i.e. the "survival of the fittest" at the expense of
the less fit. However, in biological evolution, cooperation between
evolving systems, in the sense of symbiosis and mutual support, is at least
as important. Multicellular organisms, in which the individual cells
cooperate for the collective good, are a prime example.

For genes, competition is limited to "alleles": alternative versions of a
gene which compete for the same position on an organism's chromosome. Genes
residing in different parts of the chromosome, on the other hand, do no
compete but cooperate in steering the development of the organism. Each
gene produces a particular type of protein, in reaction to the presence or
absence of other proteins in the cell. Together, these proteins build up
the cell, digest food molecules, eliminate poisonous molecules, and
generally restore the cell equilibrium after different perturbations. Genes
cooperate directly through their arrangement in networks: the product of
one gene can activate or deactivate a number of other genes, which in turn
may activate further genes, and so on.

Similarly, memes can be said to cooperate if they are coherent or support
each other. For example, the belief that the Earth is round and the belief
that the Earth circles around the sun are mutually reinforcing. The
"roundness" meme makes it easier to visualize the "circling" meme, and vice
versa. On the other hand, the roundness meme contradicts the meme which
says that the Earth is flat. Roundness and flatness behave like alleles,
which compete for the same position in a person's view of the world. Though
flatness does not directly contradict circling, it is clear that they fit
less well together than roundness and circling. Similar examples can be
found in the domains of art and fashion. Debussy's music seems to fit in
much better with impressionism in painting than with expressionism. Heavy
metal music seems to go together with riding motor bikes, but not so much
with bicycles.

Mutually supporting memes will tend to group together in larger cooperating
ensembles, like ideologies, theories or religions. Mutually exclusive
ensembles, like Catholicism and Protestantism, the Copernican and Ptolemaic
views of the solar system, or the hippie and punk movements, will compete
for converts. It is here that the "multiple parenting" issue,
distinguishing memes and genes, comes into play. Since many different
people ("parents") can try to convert the same individual, that individual
will need to make a choice between the different memes presented to her.
(In contrast, you cannot choose from which parents you inherit your genes).


For two otherwise equivalent memes, the determining characteristic will be
the number of already existing converts: the more people try to convince
you of something, the more likely it is that you will follow the lead. If
slightly more people believe in one meme, that meme will make more new
converts, and thus increase its lead over the competition. This is a
self-reinforcing evolution, where success breeds success. As confirmed by a
mathematical model of meme transmission (see Heylighen & Campbell, 1995),
the result will be that everyone in a group ends up believing the same
things ("conformism"). However, different groups, with little communication
between them, will generally believe different things, since conformist
transmission tends to amplify small differences in initial distribution of
beliefs.

Let us now see how these mechanisms of cooperation and competition are
affected by the global network. Like genes, memes on the web are arranged
in networks, where one document points to a number of supporting documents,
which in turn link to further supporting documents. Linked documents
cooperate, in the sense that they support, confirm or extend each other's
ideas. Competing documents, such as announcements of commercial
competitors, will not link to each other, or only refer to each other with
a phrase like "you should certainly not believe what is said there".

Assuming that two competing documents are equally convincing otherwise, the
competition will be won or lost by the number of links that point to each
of them. The more pointers to a document can be found, the more people will
consult it, and the more further pointers will be made. This is the same
kind of self-reinforcing process that leads to conformism, to all members
of a group settling on the same meme ensemble. The difference is that now
there are no separate groups: on the global network, everyone can
communicate with everyone, and every document can link to every other
document. The end result is likely to be the emergence of a globally shared
ideology, or "world culture", transcending the old geographical, political
and religious boundaries. (Note that such homogeneization of memes only
results for memes that are otherwise equivalent, such as conventions,
standards or codes.)

Such a networked ideology would play a role similar to that of the genome,
the network of interconnected genes that stores the blueprint, and controls
the physiology, of a multicellular organism. The corresponding "organism"
for this meme network would be the whole of humanity, together with its
supporting technology. Individual humans would play a role similar to the
organism's cells, which in principle have access to the whole of the
genome, but which in practice only use that part of it necessary to fulfil
their specific function.

There is a better metaphor for the emerging global network. Rather than
comparing it to an organism's genome, which is normally static and evolves
only because of random copying errors, it can be likened to the organism's
brain, which learns and develops in a non-random way. The network functions
like a nervous system for the social superorganism (Stock, 1993),
transmitting signals between its different "organs", memorizing its
experiences, making them available for retrieval when needed, and generally
steering and coordinating its different functions. Thus, it might be viewed
as a global brain (Russell, 1995).

The learning of new associations can be implemented by automating the
evolutionary process which creates new links. We have set up an experiment
in which a hypertext network adapts its links to the pattern of its usage
by "learning" the implicit semantics of its users. Such a learning web can
be made more intelligent by implementing the equivalent of "thoughts":
software agents, which search the net by spreading out while following
associative links, collecting information that answers the user's questions
(Heylighen & Bollen, 1996). Such brain-like networks may seem far removed
from our initial meme model, but they are still based on the same dynamics
of variation and selection of (real or virtual) copies of information.


References

Heylighen F. & Bollen J. (1996): "The World-Wide Web as a Super-Brain", in:
Cybernetics and System '96 (Austrian Society for Cybernetic Studies), p.
917-922. (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/papers/WWWSuperBRAIN.html)

Heylighen F. & Campbell D.T. (1995): "Selection of Organization at the
Social Level", World Futures:45, p. 181-212.
(file://ftp.vub.ac.be/pub/projects/Principia_Cybernetica/WF-issue/Social_MST
.txt)

Russell P. (1995): The Global Brain Awakens: Our Next Evolutionary Leap
(Miles River Press). (see http://artfolio.com/pete/GBA.html)

Stock G. (1993): Metaman: the merging of humans and machines into a global
superorganism (Simon & Schuster, New York). (see
http://tcp.ca/July94/MetamanNR.html)



________________________________________________________________________
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; http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html

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