Memes are necessarily hosted by sentient beings. So far, that's just us.
[That is, if there are other meme-supporting minds out there, there has
been no meme-transfer between them and us. (wink to Tad)]
<snip>
-- John Porter jporter@btg.com<---- End Included Message ---->
Did I miss some big part of this conversation? What about all the examples of bio-mimicry? i.e.
Ancient human spear-fisher-person notices spider building web.
Ancient human sees web catch spider-food.
"Ahah! More passive food catching equals more expendable calories!"
Ancient human spear-fisher-person weaves net and (due to successful x-fer of web-meme from spider to human brain), becomes...
Ancient human net-fisher-person.
...who continues to ponder and refine the web idea until...
Ancient human net-fisher-person becomes
[many generations pass]
...modern human WWWeb-fisher-person.
Or was that what the wink to Tad was about?
One step further would be to question whether the spider as the originator (?) of the web-meme was carrying it in any mind at all (let alone a sentient mind) or whether the web-meme was just simply stored genetically. Regardless, it seems to me that any information recording medium can theoretically function as meme transport or storage.