Memetic Horizon

It is rhetorical to say that the advent of the Internet has increased the speed of memetic transference.  This is because the world wide web isn't just a repository for history, but is the crucible for lived culture.  The waves of cultural change now crest in a matter of months, on average, with many examples being measured in smaller increments.  Not merely the ease and speed of transference, but access to channels one wouldn't normally venture into. 

 

The term Long Tail, a phenomenon in fast cultural dissemination itself, can be used in reference to culture shared.  The Internet now allows that to be flattened for all people and cultures.  With time, as all languages and cultures have access to the Internet, those in the developed world will be able to  be a part of cultures normally localized in the developing, and vice versa.  As more cultures are churned by the global network more people will be a member of a culture not traditional to their geography.  This, in turn, will result in more memetic distribution, with members of culture A mingling with members of B in country C.

 

With the prevalence of service jobs and the advent of ubiquitous wireless, we may very well see people of the same culture congregating in a given land, no longer confined based on occupation.  In this scenario the Internet would have matured to a point that such segregation would not dampen significantly memetic distribution.  Certainly cost of living plays a big part in demographic shifts as well.  Currently people from Ghana, Vietnam, India and Jamaica are moving to Great Britain, and traditional British are moving to Portugal.  The British that move to places like Portugal are doing so because of cost of living, not jobs.  Time alone will tell, but there is no doubt the flattening of the tail has begun.