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Summary: The meme makes sense.
Review: I think that the concept of the meme is valid. I think the book does a pretty good job of explaining and demonstrating it. The awareness of the meme however will greatly diminish it's effect.
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Summary: blackmore has done better
Review: I really respect Susan Blackmore and her previous work, like _Dying to Live_, but this book doesn't make the cut. It tries too hard to be interesting, and uses a journalistic style to "prove" points, e.g. "This idea was so wacky it had to be true!" This is not the restrained professionalism I've come to expect from Blackmore. She doesn't rise much above the level of crank in this one.And Blackmore's interpretation of memes as showing that human minds are glorified copy machines, aside from being utter nonsense from a cognitive science point of view, also sounds suspiciously like she's trying to slip behaviorism in through the back door. Heresies! Been reading a little too much Bertrand Russell lately, Ms. Blackmore? Sorry, I couldn't finish this book. Maybe someday Keith Henson will write a book about memetics that will convince us skeptics.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent.
Review: If you are looking for a book on memes, this book is a great improvement on Richard Brodie's "Virus of the Mind." She gives me hope that we will one day find the cure for the disease of religious dogma. She also tackles the illusion of the self, and while she doesn't completely solve the puzzle, she gives us some important clues. She comes accross as a person that you are having a casual conversation with, and at the same time she is pointing out that ego, personality, and consciousness are all cultural constructs. Fascinating!
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Summary: Piques the interest for a future science
Review: This book is a little too ambitious. Although Blackmore does not succeed in making the case for a science of memetics, she does a fantastic job trying to. With things like "Campbell's rule" and copying of instructions vs. copying of the product, she makes some good conceptual headway. She provides some good behaviorist insight on true imitation as a potential basis for memetic theory. The speculative field of memetics has yet to pull all the threads together, though Blackmore does a very good job setting the stage. I think the field as a whole could use a lot more immersion in cognitive science beyond the interesting forays of Daniel Dennett("Darwin's Dangerous Idea" highly recommended). I think the cognitive roles of language while not overlooked, could use more attention. In this vein I recommend to those interested to read "Philosophy in the Flesh" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, after you finish "The Meme Machine." The Meme Machine reads very well. It doesn't leave me seeing how memetics will get from here (speculative) to there (real science), but it leaves me thinking that there must be a way. Blackmore backs up her own ideas with some good scientific background, but doesn't lay any real empirical foundations for a science of memetics. I think until we have a better idea of the neurological organization underpinning our conceptual thinking that foundation will not appear. For some possible headway on that, again I suggest you read "Philosophy in the Flesh" after you read "The Meme Machine." I think perhaps both of these books may be converging on some similar problems from different perspectives. I think Blackmore sets some goals that are entirely too ambitious, and fails to achieve them. Instead of laying a foundation, she merely piques our interest. Don't let that stop you from enjoying "The Meme Machine." It is very interesting. Read this book. You will be glad that you did.
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Summary: Sugar is nice, but salt and pepper is the better way to go
Review: This is a difficult book to review, because the ideas expressed are difficult either to ingest, digest, or even excrete. We're dealing with the etheral world of consciousness here, and while a a scientific analysis of this world is to be encouraged, one needs to be careful just what kind of conclusions we come to. Dawkins' idea that there exists a very real but etheral entity called memes, which are basically ideas passed from one person to another, and which exist as virus-like entities within human minds is a good one. The inference therefore that they are subject to forces of natural selection in the same way that physical traits are, and that they play a significant role in cultural determination and brain/mind evolution is also a very good idea, and one worthy of detailed investigation. This book is a good and timely examination of these ideas. BUT, and this is a big BUT. My one concern with this book is this. Ms Blackmore seems on preliminiary inspection to have taken this idea of memes too far to entirely account for cultural and/or human mind/brain evolution. Time may prove this view otherwise, but it is a common indictement on science and human nature, (with the notable exception of Mr Darwins theory of evolution), that useful ideas are used to take a simplistic view of human nature, they become bookend or pigeon-hole caterogorisations, which are then used to explain just about everthing. What Ms Blackmore should perhaps remember, as she is no doubt aware, is that human nature (for want of a better word) is not easily pigeon-holed. I don't think everything about culture and/or the mind, at this preliminiary stage of memetic investigation, so to speak, is determined by this very useful idea of Mr Dawkins. Just how much our minds, and our physical brains, both in their present and developmental (or evolutionary) sense, are influenced and/or controlled by etheral entities, and how much they are influenced by as yet unknown mechanisms, instincts, in-born predispositions and tendancies, and other selective forces within our conscious universe, is something to bear in mind. Overall a thoroughly worthwhile analysis of this very useful stream called memetic science, but one which needs to be ingested mindful of historical precincts to be able to appreciate its fulsome flavour, and to not be taken with either too little, or too much, of that flavour-inducing spice we call salt.
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Summary: What a great chain of reading.
Review: First came Charles Darwin and turned it all upside down. Then came Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett to make it all understandable. And now comes Susan Blackmore with The Meme Machine to make it all bearable. Great reading stuff.
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Summary: Memes - Never heard of them? Well, they are you!
Review: This book is well written, replete with stiumulating ideas and thoughts. It reveals a model of how our thoughts may be passed so rapidly from, among and to groups of peoples - in the slow past and in today's increasingly instantaneous means of communications. Blackmore poses as many hypotheses and questions as presents speculative answers. It is important to recall that the idea of memes has been around for some time and in different forms - memes are replicators, different than genes but similar in some funtional ways. Memes make us what we are as surely as genes do. This is the first book that seeks to explain what memes might be and why they are important - the book is not aimed at a narrow scientific audience - it is easily readable and can be appreciated by a general audiencey. Memes, assuming they really do exist, may help explain why we hold values, prejudices, ethinic feelings of belongingness, superstitions and the like. It may explain why humankind has been overtaken time and again by "isms", barabarity, religious beliefs, kindness ... it may present answers to long unanswered questions about human behaviours and thoughts. Is memology a science? Not yet - not in any sense of testability. But the developing areas of the Cognitive Sciences are gradually incoroporating concepts associalted with memetics. An understanding of memes has much to offer and explain about ourselves. Blackmore does make some apparantly outlandish speculations (as with free will) - but her concise, to the point writings are nothing short of a marvel of ideas that merit further understanding and discussion. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: most recent underachiever on memetics
Review: I seldom put down books half-read, but this one's already at Half Price Books.
Rating:
Summary: A superb source of answers to a series of questions
Review: Professor Blackmore writes convincingly of the place of memes in the complex culture of humanity. The answers she provides are merely starting points for a whole new way of viewing much of our culture. I have little doubt that there will be many detractors, but so what. If her book stimulates thought, develops questions and suggests lines of research then it serves its purpose well. I have spent many years trying to find some sort of explanation for the value of Zen that would enable me to accept it for the possibilities inherent therein, yet would remove the religious element I find so objectionable. The final chapter of this book clicked with me and gave me a way of dealing with "self" and all its problems. Life will go on so much easier now the internal dialogue has ceased. I found the book of great value and would recommend it to anyone who has an open mind and willingness to look beyond what seems obvious.
Rating: 
Summary: Share my vision of the world of memes
Review: I have always been obsessed with the big questions of life - Where did we come from? Why are we here? What is consciousness? Who, or what, am I? And found no answers. I spent twenty-five years chasing the paranormal - in vain. Then in 1995 I was taken ill and lay in bed for many months, unable to work, or even speak much. During that time Dan Dennett's 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea' came out, and I read it with delight. My love of evolutionary theory was rekindled and I reread 'The Selfish Gene', in which Richard Dawkins invents the idea of memes. I had once thought this was just a fanciful analogy with genes, but soon began to see it as a theory that could transform our understanding of mind and society. As I lay in bed, unable to do anything else, I thought my way systematically through the implications of the meme concept for the evolution of the brain, the origins of language, the nature of human co-operation and altruism, and the power of religions. The more I thought about memes, the more I realised that they, not us, are the driving force in our world. You could say that they, not the genes, needed big brains for their own replication. They, not us, have created books and photocopiers, phones and faxes, for their own propagation. They, not us, have designed the Internet, and will determine its effects on the world. I have practised meditation for many years, and wondered who is fighting whom in the battle to calm the mind. Now I could see that the mess of minds is a battle between memes to take control. And we, our precious selves, I soon realised that there was no serious book on the science of memetics and I decided to write one. Fortunately I recovered and did just that.
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