The project is to develop a naturalist viewpoint on culture. "We aim to close the divide between the natural and human sciences, removing psychology from its myths of interiority and enthralment to ego." This is done by modeling the spread of culture on the transmission of infectious diseases

"The age in which humans existence is now framed, the age in which human life and technology so massively and intimately interact, can well be styled not only the information age and the age of interpretation, but, perhaps, even more inclusively, the ecological age, in principle an age of total interconnectedness, where everything on the earth, and even the universe, is interconnected with everything else, no only in itself but, ideally, in human understanding and activity." -Walter Ong from an unpublished manuscript