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SUMMARY:“Tell them about the cats”: How communication and culture driv
 es value in adopting crypto memecoins - Prof Peter Chow-White\, Visiting P
 rofessor Jesus College
DTSTART:20250522T173000Z
DTEND:20250522T183000Z
UID:TALK232045@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:May Hen
DESCRIPTION:When Richard Dawkins coined the term “memes” in his 1976 b
 ook The Selfish Gene\, he unwittingly became a media scholar and peered in
 to the future of technology and society. He described memes as infectious 
 gene-like bits of culture that spread through personal social networks. Th
 ey act as cultural replicators of ideas\, behaviors\, or styles that sprea
 d from person to person. His concept seems taken for granted nowadays and 
 common both in scholarship and popular culture. However\, his memes faced 
 derision and dismissal in the academy initially. Communication and media s
 cholars did not know what to do with the concept for the next 25 years unt
 il memes sprung up on the Internet in the 2000s and became a staple in the
  digital media landscape. While legacy media has become fractured and dive
 rsified\, memes have become a common Internet language and cultural refere
 nce. They are much more than simply funny or annoying content. They are me
 dia that share affect and common experiences and instruments for creating 
 meaning in our lives. While we drive cultural and social value to them thr
 ough communication\, they do not have economic value. This changed in 2013
  with the launch of the first memecoin called Dogecoin. For the first time
 \, a meme had a dollar value (actually a fraction of a cent at the time). 
 This is interesting in the evolution of memes and the Internet and introdu
 ces a new process of financialization in the form of the tokenization of c
 ulture. While memecoins seem frivolous and silly\, they present an opportu
 nity to explore critical elements of blockchain phenomenon outside of the 
 typical avenues of Bitcoin and Ethereum\, which can be polemic. In this ta
 lk\, I explore the relationship between economic value and social value of
  memecoins and how this gives insight into how culture and community build
 ing drive value in the blockchain space through communication in digital n
 etworks. I also touch on the evolution of memecoins and the rise and signi
 ficance of cat-themed memecoins. 
LOCATION:Coleridge Room at Jesus College
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