Susan Blackmore was right. > To help understand the next step we can think of this process as follows: one replicator (genes) built vehicles (plants and animal

Susan Blackmore was right. > To help understand the next step we can think of this process as follows: one replicator (genes) built vehicles (plants and animals) for its own propagation. One of these then discovered a new way of copying and diverted much of its resources to doing this instead, creating a new replicator (memes) which then led to new replicating machinery (big-brained humans). Now we can ask whether the same thing could happen again and — aha — we can see that it can, and is. > [...] > Computers handle vast quantities of information with extraordinarily high-fidelity copying and storage. Most variation and selection is still done by human beings, with their biologically evolved desires for stimulation, amusement, communication, sex and food. But this is changing. Already there are examples of computer programs recombining old texts to create new essays or poems, translating texts to create new versions, and selecting between vast quantities of text, images and data. Above all there are search engines. Each request to Google, AltaVista or Yahoo! elicits a new set of pages — a new combination of items selected by that search engine according to its own clever algorithms and depending on myriad previous searches and link structures. https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/08/temes-an-emerging-third-replicator/ https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/08/te...