The origin of the meme meme

Reading Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect I have come across an interesting explanation of the origin of the meme concept.

Apparently, meme was coined by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, in his book The Selfish Gene, published in 1976. Johansson explains that Dawkins described ideas as capable to evolve and spread, just like genes. Dawkins called these ‘propagating ideas’ memes, and he wrote about them (as quoted by Johansson):

I find this a wonderful idea: ideas as genes, propagating like a mutation! The best idea reaches the most people, becomes ingrained in our collective mind. And of course, the blogosphere, with most of its inhabitants being compulsive linkers as myself, is the best milieu for rapid spreading/imitation of the coolest ideas.

And that was just the fifth page of the first chapter of The Medici Effect. This book reads promising!