Linked back to peterme's discussion thread on branding again this morning, not intentionally, and I’m still a bit perplexed and bemused. The UX antibodies have sensed a foreign virus, and it is fascinating to watch the defenses, the accommodation and the battles in the interaction with: “branding”. Am I any different? Probably not, and I have found a new suit of armor to wear – Memetic Theory – in my attempt to educate all, with missionary zeal, in the triumph of the brand-eme.

First, with a broad stroke, I attempt to banish the interloper – UX – by association with the outmoded, if not discredited: It appears that user-centered doctrine is based in a traditional Darwinist “survival of the fittest” Weltansicht mixed with a more familiar cultural hamstring, Amerikanischer Puritanism. Here goes: Our job as designers is to develop a better, more successful product (read: organism) that will, by virtue of its superior qualities, will survive in the marketplace (read: cold, cruel world). Of course, any association with marketing (read: Eve, the Devil) will corrupt the product and the user (read: us, poor sinners).

On the other hand, a brand-centric point of view recognizes that, first, and foremost, we are symbolic creatures and that we live and die on Signs. In neo-Darwinian fashion, we believe that it will remain a battle for the fittest. It won’t be the best product or tool that wins necessarily: we’ve overcome that (wir haben überwunden das), it’s second nature to us already. Our work as designers begins and ends with Being, what’s coming over the horizon, capturing the usable, and making it live and resonate within our symbolic arsenal. It WILL function, we’ll make sure of that; but first, let it be part of the thriving excess of signs, symbols, jingles and doo-dads. In other words, let it be a Meme.

OK, now that the monster is out of the box, let me restate it: Our work as designers is to develop ever more compelling memes that allow symbolic association and identity to thrive between the brand and its functional components. By virtue of the symbolic association a person has with the brand, as -conveyed- through the physicality, functionality, and usability of the product, this brand will thrive in the marketplace, adapting itself over time, using its toolbox of signs, symbols, and the products themselves as vehicles for its own perpetuation. Thus, we seek the best user experience and functionality, and our success will encode for future generations more exacting standards, both for the usability of our products as well as for the symbolic arena in which we primarily live.

Back at the ocean, just after sunset, door open to hear to waves. A roar, really, in a state between steady and continual flux. "White noise," they call it.

This morning at 6:30 perusing a discussion thread on branding – two, actually – that Christina forwarded to me. I'm taken aback by the sheer fecundity of the discussions: plethora of participants, of ideas, pronouncements, posturings, insights, gobbledygook, humor, analysis and the rest. It has a peculiar effect on me, up here on the farm. What was my bread-and-butter for a year until May takes on a different dimension once I've been granted a (temporary) leave of the intractable economic Machine.

I keep returning to the image I awake to each morning of Mount Hood rising over the Columbia Gorge. With the picture windows in the bedroom, the light wakes me at dawn; with the mountain centered in the middle window, the image is as static and memorable as a postcard. Each morning's dawn, however, recreates it in my eye's mind, as the snow-covered peak begins to gently differentiate itself against the dewy sky.

"All this is real: take note" (Maurice Blanchot, The Madness of the Day). [See below for full excerpt.]

Welteinbrennen: for some reason, I need to say this in German, though I know about 10 words beyond the numbers 1-10. "World-Branding." The branding of the World. Should have a French equivalent, for use by Baudrillard: "stigmatiser du monde" (doesn't that seem to have the slightly disdainful tone one would expect of a French theorist talking about globalization American-style?).

My point is that 1) "branding" touches upon the deepest part of our being-in-the-world; and 2) it is useful to have definitions that specify what it is within the specific contexts in which we operate. This image I receive every morning is both persistent and alive, and calls to me the promise of the day. It creates a memorable experience for me. You could say it makes me believe in the world, makes sense of my struggle, generates an understanding – that I can rely on the sun shining on the mountain every day. It's not the way I would convince my prospective client to hire me, though. This is why David Aaker's definition(s) are so useful (though personally I find Jean-Noel Kapferer more helpful).

I propose we look at branding using the same benchmarks at Richard Dawkins used for genetic replication, and that Susan Blackmore uses for memetic replication: fidelity, fecundity, and longevity. Here is an attempt at a definition: A brand is a memetic replicator used for the purposes of establishing or increasing a territory of economic interest, in ways that can be transmitted easily and effectively, and that last over a long period of time.


Once a small book for me that substituted for breathing, here an excerpt from the beginning.

From The Madness of the Day, by Maurice Blanchot, trans. Lydia Davis

I am not learned; I am not ignorant. I have known joys. That is saying too little: I am alive, and this life gives me the greatest pleasure. And what about death? When I die (perhaps any minute now), I will feel immense pleasure. I am not talking about the foretaste of death, which is stale and often disagreeable. Suffering dulls the senses. But this is the remarkable truth, and I am sure of it: I experience boundless pleasure in living, and I will take boundless satisfaction in dying.

I have wandered: I have gone from place to place. I have stayed in one place, lived in a single room. I have been poor, then richer, then poorer than many people. As a child I had great passions, and everything I wanted was given to me. My childhood has disappeared, my youth his behind me. It doesn't matter. I am happy about what has been. I am pleased by what is, and what is to come suits me well enough.

Is my life better than other peoples lives? Perhaps. I have a roof over my head and many do not. I do not have leprosy, I am not blind, I see the world—what extraordinary happiness! I see this day, and outside it there is nothing. Who could take that away from me? And when this day fades, I will fade along with it—a thought, a certainty, that enraptures me.

I have loved people. I have lost them. I went mad when that blow struck me, because it is hell. But there was no witness to my madness, my frenzy was not evident: only my innermost being was mad. Sometimes I became enraged. People would say to me, Why are you so calm? But I was scorched from head to foot; at night I would run through the streets and howl; during the day I would work calmly.

All this is real: take note.

This morning, waiting for Amery to get some pool water sampled, in the car with the top down and the heat beating, I was listening to the oldies station. Elvis was crooning "Are You Lonesome Tonight." Afterwards, I switched to a station playing a beautiful lute concerto, sun warm on my newly shaven head. A freight train 50 feet behind me approaches and speeds past, first with the screech and the whoosh of the engine, then with the pleasing rhythmic rattle of the cars passing, one after another. Each – concerto, sun on head, train – a distinct and understandable meme; and together I wonder whether they form a new meme, or memeplex. As the concerto comes to its conclusion, the last cars of this long train rattle and whisper into the distance.

Thinking of the difference with the city, I imagine how the totality and density of memes blurs the distinctions of these fatefully beautiful small complexes of memes such as I experienced this morning in The Dalles.

Time out from farm-pondering to get back to meme theory for a bit.

Our brains are unnaturally large relative to our body mass compared with other animals, a process which started once we learned how to imitate each other, i.e., once meme development began. One way to understand this is through the example of the peacock’s tail. Peahens prefer peacocks with large tails, although it requires a great cost with no survival advantage for the peacock. This way, the peahens will have a better chance of producing sons with large tails, which will be selected by peahens with a similar fetish to her own, with the final result of the peahen having more grandchildren. A bit circular, but this is a commonly used example of the Darwinian theory of sexual selection.

So is the human brain to be compared to the visually magnificent but cumbersome or even useless peacock tail? Perhaps, according to Blackmore. No doubt that memes conferred a survival advantage for early humans, and still do. But as we go from imitating a master fire-builder, to imitating the best imitator, to mating with the best imitator, our brains are growing larger to perpetuate memetic ability, not survival advantage. We’re dragging around a peacock’s tail full of memes, and are quite proud of it.

Proud of our style, proud of our Bach, proud of our widget factories, proud of our brands, proud of our websites and our interfaces, proud of our cities, proud of our toys and our dancing, proud of our gadgets, proud of our art. A big brain, indeed.


The dog, by the way, brought a dead deer's head up to the farm house a few days ago. I imagine she felt proud too.

Last July 4th, Amery and I were comfortably situated in our modern “live/work” loft in San Francisco, noting that the fireworks were happening but uninterested in going to the roof to watch. This holiday, in rural Washington, was different. Martha, a retired geologist down the road, was hosting her annual gathering, where many or most of the locals of the Lyle and High Prarie area congregate on the 4th.

When Sally was done with a hay sale, Amery and I gathered in her car to drive down. Along the way, I related a dream I had yesterday night. I’m struggling to relate the details of this resonant dream, but all I can come up with is [a horse] and [empathy]. I awoke with the desire to learn to ride a horse. Shortly after we arrive, I am introduced to Leslie, who runs the boarding place for horses. We were passing her place when I was relating my dream, but I missed it in my concentration. She has a friend who is going to Europe for 2 years, and for the cost of food and medicine, I could lease the horse.

Audrey comes on with her guitar in a bit, around the seated guests and with a beautiful old folk voice, singing classics. “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” is sung communally, along with an old Woody Guthrie song about the Columbia River. Here in the Gorge, the long freight trains still run along the river, creating a powerful Americana meme around industry and landscape.

The fireworks were to be in Hood River, across the river in Oregon. About an hour before sunset we drove down in a caravan of two, settling in a small White Salmon town parking area where people had congregated to view the fireworks across the Columbia. For the next hour and a half, we were huddled in the backs of our vehicles protecting ourselves from the setting off of fireworks by our neighbors. Two people were hit and a small fire was created in a confined dry grass area 10 feet from us. Following this militia-like display of Roman Candles and the like, the state-sanctioned performance began with the comfortable distant familiarity of ritual retinal stimulation. We sped off not soon enough following the finale.

On the way home, our 6-year old niece comments that she could see the USA in some of the fireworks. I challenged her by saying I saw brown hills, green grass, and white clouds, but not the colors she was referring to. She quickly replied (she’s not adverse to correcting with the postscript “Stupid!”) that it refers to the colors of the American flag. Just checking. Memetic transmission successful.

Down the road on the way home we see a fire, a real one just off the highway next to us, spreading up the 500 ft. hill, conveyed by wind and dry grass. The hill was on fire! We drive back to the ranch, avoiding a few porcupines on our way, so James can be available for firefighting if he is called.

Thus ends the 225th anniversary of Independence Day, an occasion for re-meme-brance.

Last night, in bed under a full moon, the coyotes howl, an eerie sound. To follow, the dogs barking meaningful barks and wails. Stirring in the house, Amery leaves the bed and joins her sister, yelping "Chocolate!" "Freckles!", protecting the dogs protecting us.

I've never seen so many deer in my life. This evening, journeying through the hay fields with the family in the Jeep, every direction were deer in groups of two to ten. There used to be cougars in the hills, but they were hunted off along with most of the bobcats. They both fed on coyotes, who fed on deer. Since coyotes feed on farm animals, they've taken a hit too, hence the deer. In October, hunting begins, but won't have much effect on the number of deer: they just hide away a while, back for the winter.

Driving on the recently harvested winrows of hay over the rolling acres; then watching the telephone wires on the dirt highway rolling with the rows; and the clouds hanging as usual over Mount Adams in long, long rows horizontal across the sky – brought back a comment Jeff made to me a little while ago about a farmer named Philo Farnsworth in 1922, reflecting on the pattern he was making in the field with mule and plow, coming up with the idea of television.

Sunday, July 1
Yesterday, Tati lost her balloon, and cried. She had kept it for a few hours, and at a rest stop she opened the window and out it flew. She was devastated; it was surprising to see such an effect upon her. Why a balloon? (I don’t remember, but I imagine I cried at a lost balloon at least once.)

She finally lost her front tooth today, and will wait upon the tooth fairy tonight.

Tati has been very excitable recently. I think she is afraid of losing us, Amery and myself. We aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, so there isn’t any worry.

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being"....We’re all afraid of losing that, and all of us succumb.