Evolution, already beyond Singularity...

[sufi]

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/the-third-replicator/
The Third Replicator By SUSAN BLACKMORE

now, in the early 21st century, we are seeing the emergence of a third replicator. I call these temes (short for technological memes, though I have considered other names). They are digital information stored, copied, varied and selected by machines. We humans like to think we are the designers, creators and controllers of this newly emerging world but really we are stepping stones from one replicator to the next.

dense but well explained

in a nutshell, if i got it right, just as creatures are an ephemeral vehicle for genes, memes mad: cringingly dawkinsite terminology) have begun to reproduce independently of either vehicles or replicators and now have a life of their own - so the 'singularity' occurred and we missed it, & now we're just gimps for program

masses of interesting implications all the way from file-sharing to environmentalism, or...?

 

[grizzleb]

I hate the 'meme' chat, I can't see for the life of my why that observation is really relevant - it's an analogy for something that isn't needed. I don't think that the ability to make fire or to only eat certain plants is a 'meme' that 'parasitically' 'infected' 'human hosts'...It's an extended metaphor that really needs to be shoehorned in and doesn't impact on what you're talking about. I don't know why 'teme' is of any way an idea that is meaningfully differentiated from what 'meme' is supposed to signify anyway.

But that's just me.