The cliotechnology roadmap charts the proposed progress and development of conceptual and software tools through a pipeline of technology readyness levels. Much of this is presently pre-conceptual, just a vague idea of what might be possible; some tools are already in development. This section looks at what is being done and what might be useful.
Conceptualisation of software
Cliotechnology is partitioned into two areas of concern.
- Clioanalysis is the sourcing, encoding, analysis and visualisation of cultural pattern which can be used for establishing theories in cultural evolution, identifying cultural dynamics and patterns of descent and historical trends, forcasting likely futures and strategic opportunities for intervention in cultural practice, and anticipating the impact of such interventions.
- Cliosynthesis is about exploiting those identified opportunities by generating new cultural objects, dispersing them socially, and monitoring and maintaining their survival.
At the moment, it is only possible to envasage that the future will provide some way of performing these operations; much is not even on the drawing board. However, it is forseeable that much practical effort will be directed towards using the vastly connected global network facilitated by the internet, and performed using software tools. Clearly some unified software engineering framework is likely to be involved that models and manipulates cultural data. As a starting point, the “Grand Framework” (a working title) has been proposed. This hierarchial framework offers a system of modelling and decomposing cultural entitites mathematically. In tune with Darwinism, the framework is amenable to evolution, and tightly version controlled to promote variation and selective retention. In turn, the underlying conceptual framework drives the development of the software tools for analysisng and synthesising cultural objects. The software then is likely to be of the form of scrapers and scoopers (for getting data off the web and other sources); databases for storage and retrieval of cultural data; analytical software for reconstruction of dynamical patterns; synthesisers and simulators for experimenting with novel cultural forms; and bots for dissemination of the resulting knowledge.
Currently in development
Project Scoop
Scrapers are a piece of software that automate the stripping-out desired information from a web-page or series of web pages. Project Scoop is a scraper strategy that crawls the web pulling out memes and meme fragments; it was named after a project in Crichton’s science-fiction novel: The Andromida Strain.
According to Michael Critchton: Project Scoop aims to collect any organisms that live in the upper atmosphere of the earth. On the surface, it is a purely scientific project, but its real purpose is to discover new biological weapons. The first five Scoop satellites discovered no new organisms; the sixth, which came down near Bombay, India, contained a previously unknown organism that turned out to be benevolent; Scoop VII had just come down in Arizona…(which, in the film, puts the town of Piedmont in New Mexico instead)
The results of scooping wild memes off the web are formatted into a schema and placed in a database. This allows for the analysis of memes, but also provides a bank of recombinable fragments that can be spliced and simulated.
LUCA
The Large Unified Cultural Archive is a database that emulates the Human Genome Diversity Project, but represents a catalogue of cultural linnean information objects (clions) and their memetic blueprints (cliomes). It is named in postumous honour of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza who pioneered both genetic and linguistic phylogenetic reconstruction. Luca aspires to catalogue the whole of cultural diversity across time. As it is a catalogue of Linnean proportions, if not bigger, then the effort should be crowdsourced as well as automated through scooping. The purpose is to provide scholars of cultural evolution with a large dataset of cultural objects and their replicators so that theories might be tested against a standardised empirical data set.
CMVC
As evolution consists of variation and selective retention, then building an image of cultural evolution involves being able to distinguish between the variations of cultural objects. In the world of software development, it is critical to know which release of an API a system is using, and this is tightly controlled by Configuration Management and Version Control. The version serves as an index to the software specification, interface capabilities, issue awareness, and other performance paramerters. It usually consists of three numbers seperated by period marks. The SemVer (semantic versioning) standard gives major, minor, and patch versions. Products, such as refrigerators and other domestic appliences, are often given model numbers. To track cultural evolution, at least in the database, a form of version control would be beneficial and SemVer offers a candidate system. This version control should be assigned to all cultural objects, or at least their entries, and revisions, and updates. As the cataloging system itself is amenable to revision, then it too is subject to version control. The guidelines are too involved to detail here.
The Grand Framework
To allow for the encoding of cultural object in a unified shema, a consistant notation is required. The Grand Framework (a working title) is proposed that provides a hierachial and decomposable modelling language for describing cultural objects. This enables culture as a whole to be broaken down into its memetic substratit, and futher into sub-memetic particles. Specific terminology such as cliome, clion, noam and toulmin frameworks have been adopted to reduce confustions caused by existing terms. A clion is essentially the phenetic expression as a cultural object at a species level; its cliome is the memetic code (ie memeplex) that is expressed through the clion’s traits.
MENDEL
The Meme Encoded Numerically Derived Evolutionary Lineages (MENDEL) system is named in honour of Gregor Mendel who pioneered the science of inheritance. It is an analytical software system that reconstructs phylogenetic, phenetic, cladistic and other inferences from the cultural taxonomic data in the database.
EDEN-ML
Is a “simulacrarium”, a software environment for splicing and evaluating novel recombinations of meme-fragments. Environmental parameters can be preset, and simulations executed using genetic/memetic algorithms, to evolve viable new cultural forms. EDEN-ML is obviously an anagram of MENDEL: and is a synthesis module to complement the analytical one. Eventually, a cultural equivalent of CRISPR base editing is envisaged whereby point mutations in the code of culture that give rise to cultural maladaptations can be interviened upon for eusocial purposes.
Cyber Chain Home
The Chain Home system was a network of radar detectors around the British East coast that gave the RAF an advantage over the Nazis in the Battle of Britain in World War 2. It was able to pinpoint incoming enemy aircraft thereby giving the Spitfires advanced warning to scramble. Cyber Chain Home operates on the internet, and takes the same principle of being able to monitor the presence, location, and trajectory of memes across the web. It acts like a network of meme radars providing a picture of what is prevalent and what is spreading, and among whom.
Bernasian Cliostat
Edward Bernays is known as the father of propaganda, and what has become known as public relations. The idea of a “cliostat” is like that of a thermostat. A thermostat determins if a room temperature is above a certain level, and switches the heating on or off accordingly, thereby maintaining a desired temperature. The Bernasian Cliostat therefore is about cybernetic control of propaganda across the internet. By measuring memetic prevalance against a setting it can be used to reinforce, inhibit or counter prevaling sentements. One component (“HIPE”) is concerned with the acellerated propagation of ideas throughout a population. By adjusting the “settings” it can be applied to steering culture.