The total mass of memes grows over time.

Competition among memes to be hosted by a growing—yet still limited—number of hosts (humans) becomes increasingly fierce. Humans today absorb more memes than they used to. The Flynn effect studies show that IQ scores rose by approximately 3 points per decade during the 20th century. There is yet to be established a correlation between the IQ and the mass or the number of memes; however, from what we know about the ontology and epistemology of memes, the mass of memes should be positively correlated to IQ. Human intellectual capacities grow as the supply of memes increases.

The supply of memes to humans follows the general market law of supply and demand. More memes trigger greater human consumption (capacity), and greater capacity leads to even higher demand.

Memes compete for hosts. Humans, in turn, compete to acquire and reproduce better memes—those with higher fidelity, fecundity, and longevity—since better memes make for better humans, characterized by the same qualities.

A person must plant a tree (nature), conceive a child (genetic legacy), and write a book (memetic legacy). Memes that are spread with our identity embedded in them become lasting monuments. Tombstones, once the primary tools for symbolic immortality, were replaced by books—and now by digital tools that offer superior fecundity and fidelity, though they may struggle with longevity.

This is why digital longevity is of such crucial importance.

We are not afraid that data, as such, will be erased—who cares about raw data? What we fear is that memes bearing our imprints will disappear. With digital tools, we have solved the fidelity problem once and for all. Fecundity is also greater in the digital realm, as reproduction is easier than in the analog, offline world. Yet even with this advantage, we accept that we will eventually vanish, first as biological entities and a bit later as memetic creatures. The longevity remains the unanswered question.

Most people are forgotten memetically within a few generations. The energy needed to maintain fecundity does not come from nowhere; constant input is required. Oblivion—another term for the entropy law in the memetic realm—is omnipresent. But even if we set aside fecundity, we would at least hope not to vanish because of a trivial technical failure of digital memory.

Computers, cloud storage, and blockchain technology are paving the way for increasingly robust, technically supported meme longevity. The blockchain’s decentralized architecture, which mirrors the brain’s own network structure, stands as the ultimate example—so far—of humanity’s evolutionary ingenuity in the fight against memetic death.

However, the answer to the question of longevity cannot be solved by digital machines. Since we know that memes are intersubjective, we understand that digital machines can only transfer material memes, while memes in their material/strategic duality can only survive intersubjectively.

Imagine the most powerful computer with no subjectivity to observe (to measure it, in quantum terminology). Such a computer could host all the existing material memes. Yet, they would remain barren if not observed by a human being or any other being capable of “importing” material memes into its memetic field, thus rearranging vector fields (sensemaking activity).

So, we must conclude that the longevity of memes and, with that, the time that a person remains remembered, depends on the longevity of the person as a meme.