ABSTRACT
Metaphors that leap from biology to computing to the humanities and back are a symptom of these times, and few are more potent than those of the virus and the gene. News stories from the summer of 2000 underscore the prevalence of this imagery: efforts to sequence the human genome were complete; an e-mail virus spread worldwide from the Philippines; and concern over genetically modified crops was widespread. It is against this backdrop that humanists and social scientists are attempting to explain the spread of cultural information by turning to memetics, an outgrowth of evolutionary biology.
