Chapter Twelve:

Elements of Memetics

A city is a giant information system that allows its physical components (people, roads, vehicles, buildings, parks, power, water, and sewage infrastructures) to move and change in much the same way the brain changes. This neuroplasticity is a part of the way natural cybernetic systems process information, and evolved computers physically change in response to changes in activity. In our metaphor here, saying that a city is a giant computer is the same as saying a city is a giant brain.

Culturally, we speak of cities as having a character, and the concept of a genus loci, or a spirit tied to a city's heart in the form of a totemic intelligence, goes back as far as human history has been recorded. Even a city as conservative and mundane as Wichita, Kansas has a 'Keeper of the Plains' totem guarding the local river from tornadoes that appears on all local government documents, Copenhagen has the little mermaid (a.k.a. Den Lille Havfrue), and all state capitals in the United States have the goddess Columbia present in some fashion (and, in fact, the hymn 'Hail, Columbia' was the United States original, unofficial national anthem until the 1930's.)