The memes that Carol's grandmother told of the traveling seamstress, who went from home to home, staying for a few weeks to do all the family sewing, mending, etc., were in fact her life’s story.
Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution or a cross between an idea and a gene.
2. A trend, a belief, a fashion or a phrase that is passed from generation to generation through imitation and behavioral replication: The meme that only males wear pants has been debunked in modern times.3. Etymology: coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, where he stated that memes and memetics are the cultural counterpart to the biological study of genes and genetics.
Using the evolution analogy, Dawkins observed that human cultures evolve via 'contagious' communications in a manner similar to the gene pool of populations over time.
The use of meme suggests or implies the acceptance of the idea that in humans, cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become more important than biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits.
Memes are like information technology in that they travel back and forth from one concept to another ad infinitum, or endlessly
What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a "spark of life". It is information, words, instructions, Richard Dawkins declared in 1980.
Memes emerge in brains and travel outward, establishing beachheads on paper and celluloid and silicon and anywhere else information can go.
Most of the biosphere cannot see the infosphere; it is invisible, a parallel universe humming with ghostly inhabitants. We humans alone among the earth's organic creatures, live in both worlds at once.