You’ve been typing on the same keyboard layout for 150 years. Not because it’s the best—far from it—but because it won the power game of culture. The QWERTY keyboard isn’t just a relic; it’s a perfect example of how certain ideas become entrenched not because they’re superior, but because they get locked into our institutions and daily habits. This is a story about how power and culture shape the memes that stick with us.

The Dvorak keyboard is 70% more efficient than QWERTY. Faster typing, less fatigue, ergonomically superior by every measure. It's been available since 1936.

Why are you still using QWERTY?

In 1873, Christopher Latham Sholes designed the QWERTY keyboard to be deliberately inefficient - it separated commonly-paired letters to prevent mechanical typewriter jams. By 1890, the jam problem was solved. Better layouts existed. QWERTY persisted anyway.

150 years later, you're still using it.

This is a story about power.

Memes: The Units of Culture

To understand why QWERTY won, we need a framework for how culture actually spreads. In 1976, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins proposed that ideas behave like genes. Just as genes are the units of biological inheritance, memes are the units of cultural inheritance - discrete cultural units that replicate from mind to mind through imitation.

"QWERTY is the standard keyboard layout" is a meme. Not a vague influence or amorphous trend, but a specific, transmissible idea that spreads through observable acts: a typing teacher showing students which keys to use, an employer listing "QWERTY proficiency" in a job posting, a worker teaching a colleague the finger positions, a manufacturer printing letters on keys in that specific arrangement.

Each transmission replicates the meme. Each replication strengthens it. The meme doesn't need anyone to believe QWERTY is better - it only needs people to use it and transmit it. This is how culture actually works: not as some mystical force, but as discrete units competing for replication.

And here's what changes everything: not all memes have equal fitness.

How Dominant Culture Replicates Itself

Charlie Munger said, "Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome." QWERTY shows us why he was right - and why that's only half the story.

Memes don't replicate because they're optimal. They replicate because they help people survive and prosper. QWERTY spread not because it was the best keyboard, but because knowing QWERTY helped you get hired, stay coordinated, and avoid risk. The meme's fitness wasn't technical - it was social and economic.

QWERTY didn't win because it was first. It won because it embedded itself in the institutions that control coordination. By the time Dvorak emerged in 1936, QWERTY had become the infrastructure: typing schools taught it, employers required it, manufacturers built it, and workers had invested thousands of hours mastering it.

Each person reinforced the pattern through rational self-interest. The typing school gained authority by teaching the standard that employers demanded. Employers reduced hiring friction by requiring skills that schools taught. Workers secured employment by learning what employers required of them. Manufacturers achieved economies of scale by producing what everyone used.

Nobody needed to defend QWERTY. The system defended itself.

This is what Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci called cultural hegemony - when dominant patterns replicate not through force, but because they've become embedded in the institutions that shape everyday life. The pattern becomes "common sense." Questioning it seems impractical. Alternatives feel risky, weird, or unnecessary.

QWERTY wasn't just a keyboard layout; it was a revolution. It was a coordination infrastructure that served everyone's immediate interests, even while locking in an inferior standard. The dominant culture replicated itself because each person's survival depended on maintaining it.

Why Culture Eats Strategy

Peter Drucker supposedly said, "culture eats strategy for breakfast." QWERTY vs. Dvorak shows us why. From 1936 forward, the strategy was clear: Dvorak is 70% more efficient. Ergonomists advocated for it. Studies proved it. The Navy trained typists on it with measurable success.

The strategy was right. The culture didn't care.

Because changing the keyboard layout meant retraining every typist, replacing every machine, rewriting every training manual, coordinating the transition across thousands of organizations, and risking your career on being the person who pushed for change. The meme that replicated wasn't "use the best layout" - it was "use the layout that keeps me employed, coordinated with others, and safe from risk."

Culture eats strategy because culture operates through memetic replication, and the memes that spread are the ones that serve existing power structures. Strategy is conscious intention. Culture is the pattern that actually replicates through institutions, incentives, and aligned self-interest.

You can't strategy your way out of QWERTY. You'd need to change the entire ecosystem that makes QWERTY functional - the schools, the employers, the manufacturers, and the workers' learned behavior. You'd need to build counter-hegemonic coordination infrastructure powerful enough to overcome the existing system.

That's not a strategy problem. That's a power problem.

So What?

Understanding the memetics of power changes how you approach organizational change. Most leaders try to fix culture by announcing new values, running workshops, or hiring consultants to "align the team." They're handing out Dvorak keyboards while leaving the typing schools, job requirements, and manufacturing infrastructure unchanged.

It doesn't work because they're fighting memetic selection at the wrong level.

If you want to change which memes replicate, you have three options: change the power structure itself by altering the incentives, resources, and coordination mechanisms that select for current memes - this is hard, but it's the only way to make new memes stick. Or work with existing selection pressures by finding memes that serve your goals AND fit the current power structure - this is a compromise, but often the only viable path. Or build counter-hegemonic infrastructure by creating alternative coordination systems strong enough to compete with dominant patterns - this is what revolutions require, and why they're rare.

What you can't do is ignore power and expect better ideas to win on merit. QWERTY shows us the cost of that delusion: 150 years of suboptimal typing because we keep acting like culture should respond to strategy.

Seizing the Memes of Production

"Seizing the Memes of Production" is a playful twist on Marx's "seize the means of production."

The parallel is exact. Means of production = factories and capital that make goods. Memes of production = institutions and platforms that select which ideas replicate.

QWERTY won because typing schools, employers, and manufacturers controlled the memes of production. They determined which keyboard layout spread - not through conspiracy, but through coordination infrastructure.

Whoever controls the institutions that select and transmit memes controls which culture dominates.

The Lesson

This pattern repeats everywhere. The founder who can't figure out why their team won't adopt the "better process." The consultant who watches their recommendations die in implementation. The operator who sees the right move but can't get the organization to execute. They're all fighting QWERTY - trying to install new memes into systems where the existing memes are functional for power structures.

The memes that dominate aren't the best ones. They're the ones that serve the arrangement of resources, legitimacy, and coordination that already exists. Until you understand how power selects which memes replicate, you'll keep losing to inferior patterns that feel like "common sense."

This is the memetics of power: culture is made of memes, dominant culture replicates itself through institutions, and culture eats strategy because the memes that spread are the ones power structures select for. QWERTY is still here 150 years later, not despite its inferiority, but because of how perfectly it demonstrates this mechanism.

The question isn't "why does QWERTY persist?"

The question is: what's the QWERTY in your organization, and what power structure is selecting for it?

This is the first in a series exploring how memes replicate through power structures - and what that means for anyone trying to change organizational patterns. Next: "Move Fast and Break Things: How a Meme Colonized Founder Identity."