A significant benefit of the media age is a new appreciation for the ways ideas travel. Prior to the internet, it was obvious that ideas spread fastest and furthest by word of mouth. Why? Well, for one, it simply wasn't possible to demonstrate what you meant otherwise. Language was king. The radio, and eventually television, allowed voices to travel to corners of the world that had never been directly exposed to the concerns of the wider populace. We're just now getting accustomed to the exposure (now global), and now we're being forced deal with the fallout: communication has been pushed further than the boundaries of language itself. It has shifted from speech to demonstration.
Technology favors the meme. From cups with strings, to telegraphs, to telephones, to video chats. From oral tradition, to written word, to printed books, to blogging, to vlogging. It could be that tech trends determine the ways that memes are propagated, but it seems more likely that successful trends become successful because they make meme propagation more efficient. Perhaps we have misjudged the active player. Perhaps the meme favors technology.
The obvious has changed.
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