I'm a graphic designer and am just reading through this forum -- trying to get my head around memetics.
Quote Phil "Memeticists (and you) are using memetics to explain religion, politics, morality; if you concende it's not science, why are you using it to explains X and Y ?"
Are gestalt theory and semiotics considered to be a science? To me it seems like although memetics isn't a science it has explainitory power in the same way. And also predicts-- Through memetics I can predict that if I design a advertising campaigne featuring anorexic models-- then people will not only copy the fashion of clothes-- they will adopt the idea that being thin is beautiful, so the anorexia meme will spread. But I guess what Phil is saying is that there are other theories that explain this better.
As a designer what Bascule wrote about language- following an evolutionary model exhibiting drift and speciation is fascinating to me.
I see the icons, typefaces, symbols, graphic designers make as visual language that also could be studied through memetics. For instance when graphic designers appropriate cultural symbols like the Maori Koru, into logos and branding systems- they eventually create variations that compete with the origninal symbol and change it into something else over time. In New Zealand the Koru no longer means Maori -- it means New Zealand. And becuase so many government institutions use it-- the Koru may eventually mean government institution. Anyway, I am finding memetics works well to explain the evolution of graphic design.
