Simple Memes and Complex Cultural Dynamics

David Batten () and Roger Bradbury
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David Batten: CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
Roger Bradbury: Tjurunga and the Australian National University

Chapter Chapter 6 in New Directions in Regional Economic Development, 2009, pp 97-105 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Regions and their policies are built on many things, such as ideas, actions, habits, skills, inventions, songs and stories, to name a few. This paper views all of these as selfish Darwinian entities – memes – that, like genes, interact and replicate in complex ways with humans to shape our culture. Perniciously, simple memes can exploit our limited capacity to deal collectively with complex problems. Whether good or bad, a single, omnipotent meme can dominate a local region of meme-space. Most arguments in this paper originated at a workshop on “Memes as Complex Systems” held in Canberra from 13–17 August, 2004 and funded by CSIRO’s Centre for Complex Systems Science (see Batten et al. 2007).

Keywords: Emergent Property; Complex Adaptive System; Organise Crime; Policy Entrepreneur; Archival Information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-01017-0_6

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