Memes as "Toy Models" (Reza Negarestani)

[Syderas (Gabriela)]

@Seong

It would seem that memes certainly have all of the makings of toy models. But what exactly are they modelling? Do they primarily perform a bookkeeping role "in the same sense as Wimsatt’s ‘genetic bookkeeping argument’, in which genetics is most useful as the study of readily identified markers of the evolutionary process"? Or, could they be said to perform a more speculative role as in Negarestani's thesis that humanity is a toy model for posthuman intelligence?

I tend to side with the Bookkeeping alternative. I think on the same level as memes are a new form of communication that depends on new conditions (the internet and its framing of subject relation - the "wow that is LITERALLY me" effect), they're the resurfacing of what id call communicative "needs" that have existed for ages, culturally. I think the cut-up/remix model of memes for example is not so different from the kinds of instincts or desires that would have lead someone to, say, plunderphonic music, mail-art, relay novels, fanfiction or what have you.

WITH THAT SAID, the idea of memory is a topic i am very interested in on basically all fields i encounter, so that may be just me retrofitting it into broader theories on art lol.

@Seong

If memes are toy models, then making memes is an experimental research methodology. If making memes is an experimental methodology, then we should develop tools and infrastructure to facilitate a standardised and even replicable way to conduct such experiments. We should develop our own laboratories for meme studies!

I do find the idea of taking a non-standardized concept like memes into a laboratory-like condition to be very compelling!