It is human activity which is crystallised into machines and information, not memes which create 'mass crystal'. Having briefly admitted that humans are the subject and culture is the object of their labour, the Memesis statement quickly reverts to its favourite philosophical inversion dressed up in computer jargon. Once again, it is not clever artists, musicians or designers who use digital technologies to create innovative new forms of cultural expression. Moreover, the practice of sampling the work of others is hardly new. For centuries, artists have plagiarised their predecessors and contemporaries.
All collective endeavours involves a constant process of sampling and 'copy and paste'.
What the new information technologies have done is make the process much easier and more aesthetically pleasing. Above all, they have enhanced and deepened the possibilities of strange juxtapositions and hallucinatory combinations. The Futurists could only dream of machine music. Jungle musicians can now actually create the digital rhythms of drum 'n' bass. Exhausted, we at last reach the end of this journey through intellectual confusion.