Ideas can now be carried in the ether. Because the medium for carrying ideas is fast and cheap, ideas move faster and cheaper! Whether it's the image of the new VW Beetle (how long did it take for the idea of that car to find a place in your brain?) or the words of a new Stephen King novel (more than 600,000 people read it in the first week it was available online), the time it takes for an idea to circulate is approaching zero.
Why should we care? Why does it matter that ideas can instantly cross international boundaries, change discussions about politics, crime and justice or even get us to buy something? Because the currency of our future is ideas, and the ideavirus mechanism is the way those ideas propagate. And the science and art of creating ideaviruses and using them for profit is new and powerful. You don't have to wait for an ideavirus to happen organically or accidentally. You can plan for it and make it happen.
