Introducing The Memetic Footprint As A Concept
Today, when all ideas, whatever their worth, are freely available on the Internet, we ourselves have to be very savvy about weighing up divergent opinions, about which sources we trust and what who we choose to believe. Because the world is now so interconnected we have a situation where a YouTube video made in the Middle East can inspire someone across the other side of the world to stab their MP. Ideas, good, bad and indifferent, can travel further and faster than ever before. To a greater or lesser degree, we all need to be aware of our own “memetic footprint”; as well as developing the tools to deal with other’s ideas, we have to also take responsibility for the ideas we ourselves pump out. That goes double for designers and writers! As I say on the back of the book, “In the new democracy of ideas, cultural power is devolving to the creative individual. Soon, we will all have the means to create. We just have to decide whether it be art or bombs”.
- Rian Hughes, designer and writer of Cult-Ure, the book he references above and which I am eagerly awaiting to have delivered by Amazon as you read these very words.
Related posts: