Good ideas can go extinct and bad ideas can infect whole societies.
The future prospects of the meme idea are uncertain on both counts, and the point of this book is not to ensure that the meme meme flourishes, but to ensure that if it does , it ought to. It works toward this worthy end by creating a landmark, a fixed point not of doctrine but of evidence and methods, some shared acknowledgment among some leading proponents and critics about how the issues ought to be addressed. The annual Superbowl of American football draws a huge television audience, and as a result attracts advertisers who are willing to pay more than a million dollars for half a minute of the viewers' distracted attention. For one thing, they offer the guarantee of shared attention . When you watch an ad during the Superbowl, you know that you are seeing the same ad, at the same time, as millions of other viewers, and you know that they know this as well.