Finally, we might decide that civilisation itself is worth preserving. In that case we have to work out what to save and which people would be needed in a drastically reduced population - weighing the value of scientists and musicians against that of politicians, for example...

'Temes' [technology-enhanced memes] don't care about us - they simply want to create more of themselves. Don't think we created the internet for our own benefit - think about temes spreading for themselves because they must.

I have not come up with anything original. It needs a better brain than mine! I have done what I can do in taking Dawkins' idea and extending it.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they think about memes is they try to extend on the analogy with genes. That's not how it works. It works by realizing the concept of a replicator.

The sale of sex in modern societies is not about spreading genes. Sex has been taken over by the memes.

Science has, after all, made some colossal blunders in the past... Our current materialism and its rejection of the idea of a spirit or soul might be just another great falsity.

Memetics provides a new approach to the evolution of language in which we apply Darwinian thinking to two replicators, not one. On this theory, memetic selection, as well as genetic selection, does the work of creating language.