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Nodal memory is a pattern that allows cyberspace to exist and this concept of nodal memory also holds true for human social networks. The memory of individuals is a kind of nodal memory, and the interactions that individuals engage in form the connections that define the network. So, in essence, there is a type of cyberspace that exists entirely on the 'hardware' of human brains and personal social interactions. This cyberspace is the 'meme space' and has been called the Noosphere by Pierre Teilhard¹⁸ before the concept of memetics was fully fleshed out by Richard Dawkins. Once we have a conceptual space, it is simple enough to conceptualize the bodies that move within that space. These bodies are ideas, or memes, and their survival is dependent upon persistence in nodal memory.

Memes incline the host organism to actions that further the meme's survival in some manner. Sometimes the actions increase replication via communication over various types of networks, sometimes they increase the meme's persistence in memory. Many times the actions the meme encourages adjust these two primary factors indirectly. Observed actions are a kind of communication, so memes spread via performance as well as through verbal interaction. Performing an action plants the idea of the performance as action in the minds of the observers. Think of this book as a capsid¹⁹ for a memetic virus, or a casing for a memetic seed. In order to survive and spread, memes need communication between potential hosts and a way to interact with the host organism's motivational system.

To carry this idea into the text itself, it is in this book's best interest as a memetic wrapper for us, as authors, to include the next paragraph: