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Culture of the Internet / edited by Sara Kiesler.

Chapter 7: Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality: Playing in the MUDs

This chapter discuesses the way people deal with the concept of self in virtual worlds through MUDs (Multiuser Dimensions). These MUDs are in part creations of their users, who may design their characters (name, gender, species, physical attributes) as well as the "rooms" of the dungeons themselves. They are free to experiment with identity and often choose to do so. Interactions between players parallel and sometimes overlap with or substitute for real life. One example looks at a Yale dropout who used a role playing game as a form of therapy. Her mother disowned her after she had an abortion, and through role playing, the daughter was able to understand and come to terms with what happened. Another example describes a physics grad student whose physical health was so fragile that he could not go out normally without putting his life in danger. He spends hours on MUDs socializing with people from across the world. In doing this, he fulfills a need for social interaction that he might otherwise miss out on entirely. In these virtual spaces, players often project their ideal self through their virtual identities. MUDs offer an environment similar to real life and often equally useful for simulating and processing personal issues. In some situtations, they may even serve as something better than reality. Because of the difference between real-life and online social interaction, certain issues, such as sexism and gender roles can be more visible in a MUD, allowing for discussion of such topics. The addition of non-fatal guns to one MUD was another cause for debate. Changing the dynamics of the world (some players wanted to kill for fun) led to debate, virtual laws, and even the election of a virtual sheriff. MUDs demonstrate a certain tension between the real and artificial through which we can reconstruct and examine aspects of our own culture.

The author seems particularly biased toward MUDs, probably due to his research methods: joining and participating in various MUDs. The examples she uses focus a little heavy on the fringe of society rather than the average person who happens to participate in a MUD. This suggests that the correlation between MUD culture and real-life culture is limited.

If being a part of a community, such as a MUD gives people another means of expressing who they are or defining themselves, then so too might their preferences in memes be a means of expression.

Culture of the Internet / edited by Sara Kiesler. [0805816356 (alk. paper) ] Mahwah, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997.
Call#: Van Pelt Library HE7631 .S613 1997

Evolution of Memes on the Network: from chain-letters to the global brain

Heylighen begins his examination of memes by comparing them with genetics. Genetics is generally an apt metaphor for memetics. Memes are more or less "copied" from one person to another, sometimes varying from the original. Different memes are more or less consistent, infective, or different from majority or prior notions. However, there are key differences. Memes can be transmitted between any two people, rather than parent-to-child. Memes also replicate much more quickly, and thus can spread throughout a network almost instantly.

The next part of the article deals with meme replication on the internet. The key parts of such information transmission are the internet's high copy-fidelity (digitization allows for lossless transfer), high fecundity (computers can produce a large volume of copies quickly), and greater longevity (digital information can be stored indefinitely). Consequently, the internet allows greater and more efficient replication of memes. Real-world boundaries are also pushed aside, allowing diffusion to occur from multiple sources and geographical locations outward rather than from a single source outward and potentially limited by physical and linguistic boundaries. Due to the nature of the internet, permanently copying information is not always necessary, but rather linking to information (with the assumption that it will always exist at that location) is more efficient. This suggests that the number of incoming links to something on the web is important for measuring its spread.

The article also discusses how memes can compete with each other or work together, similar to genes. When memes compete, the idea is that the more popular one will win out. As it pertains to the web, the more linked site will draw more new viewers who will then also link it, making it even more popular. For a global network, this means that there would likely be a shared ideology eventually.

This article effectively links the nature of memes and genes. It has detailed information on the properties of memes and how they apply to what gets spread across the internet. What this article is lacking is in examples that support the emergence of a global brain. The theory behind it is well-explained, but the external factors that make things more popular or less popular among certain subsets of society are not mentioned.

The Internet and Memetics

This article analyzes how the internet works in terms of memetics. In this way of viewing things, each user and website is a different agent or node in the network: not aware of the underlying structure of the network, but instead only concerned with its immediate links within that network. Marshall takes a bottom-up approach and applies memetics to each level. At the operational level, the internet is a series of linked memes through which information and messages are routed through agents that have a specific purpose but do not know the intentions of the central controller. At the service level, agent are interfaces designed to achieve certain goals through interacting with other agents. In the example Marshall gives, a search engine for online stores has a goal of interfacing with other agents (the online stores) and processing the information. At the user level, the internet memeplex is able to transmit information quickly and ignore real-world boundaries. Thus users are able to indicate what information they want to receive, and then get it through the network. Marshall concludes that the memetic support system embedded in the internet make it more efficient and allows each additional layer to perform more useful and complex operations efficiently.

Although the aim of this paper is sound, the connection between each level is not discussed in any amount of detail. The clearest points are the discussion on virtual communities and general overview of how the internet can operate as a series of memeplexes.