The social organism : a radical understanding of social media to transform your business and life

The social organism A radical understanding of social media to transform your business and life

Oliver Luckett

Book - 2016

"From visionary tech entrepreneur Oliver Luckett and MIT Media Lab's Michael J. Casey, a groundbreaking, must-read theory of social media how it works, how it's changing human life, and how we can master it for good and for profit. In barely a decade, social media has positioned itself at the center of twenty-first century life. The combined power of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Vine have helped topple dictators and turned anonymous teenagers into celebrities overnight. In the social media age, ideas spread and morph through shared hashtags, photos, and videos, and the most compelling and emotive ones can transform public opinion in mere days and weeks, even attitudes and priorities that had pers...isted for decades. How did this happen? The scope and pace of these changes have left traditional businesses -- and their old-guard marketing gatekeepers -- bewildered. We simply do not comprehend social media's form, function, and possibilities. It's time we did. In The Social Organism, Luckett and Casey offer a revolutionary theory: social networks -- to an astonishing degree -- mimic the rules and functions of biological life. In sharing and replicating packets of information known as memes, the world's social media users are facilitating an evolutionary process just like the transfer of genetic information in living things. Memes are the basic building blocks of our culture, our social DNA. To master social media -- and to make online content that impacts the world -- you must start with the Social Organism. With the scope and ambition of The Second Machine Age and James Gleick's The Information, The Social Organism is an indispensable guide for business leaders, marketing professionals, and anyone serious about understanding our digital world -- a guide not just to social media, but to human life today and where it is headed next"--

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Subjects
Online social networks in business.
Social media.
Social change.
Published
New York : Hachette Books 2016.
Language
English
Main Author
Oliver Luckett (author)
Other Authors
Michael J. Casey (author)
Edition
First Edition
Physical Description
xxxix, 292 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-279) and index.
ISBN
9780316359528
  • Preface: Purging hate
  • Introduction: Epiphany in the desert: the seven rules of life in social media
  • The algorithm of life: how we process information and evolve as a society
  • From steeples to Snapchat: the Darwinian march of media
  • The age of holarchy: the interconnected, decentralized cell structure of social media
  • Cracking the memetic code: how ideas spread like viruses
  • Balanced diet: the organism must be fed healthy content
  • The immune system: how social media responds to unwelcome threats
  • Confronting our pathogens: bolstering the cultural immune system
  • Thomas and Teddy: the open constitution of the social organism
  • Digital culture: toward a global brain.
Review by Booklist Review

Luckett and Casey are established authorities in the world of social media. If anyone can help us understand this digitally connected world, it's them and they don't disappoint. They propose that the best way to comprehend the nature of social media is through the model of the seven characteristics of biological life. The book offers a deeply informed and nuanced portrait of the social-media landscape, supported by numerous examples. Although the outlook is hopeful, the authors clearly recognize the pitfalls and dangers social media presents and argue that we must guide its development if we want to make it better. The title implies that this will be a practical how-to manual for anyone who wants to take advantage of social media. It's not. This is an overarching theory of social media, spanning disciplines from biology to anthropology to business to computer science. Whether or not you agree with their vision for what social media can be and do, this work offers a compelling model to understand what social media is.--Keogh, John Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Luckett and Casey argue that social media-today's digital world of images, videos, hashtags, and more-"functions on every level like a living organism." Their history of modern mass communication, from "super-bloggers," Friendster, and MySpace to LinkedIn, Instagram, and Vine, creates a context in which to effectively explore such topics as memes, selfies, and YouTube stardom. Examples include #BlackLivesMatter, Brexit, Twitter, Grumpy Cat, and Bat Kid. The extended metaphor works well to illustrate social media's power as a means of communication and driver of change, though Luckett and Casey's discussion bogs down at times in lengthy explanations of biological processes, including a puzzling digression on boll weevils. They offer a mostly positive perspective on social media as a living organism but take a very dim view of Facebook's "censorship" of users. They also make the important balancing point that "social media pitchfork mobs can engage in mass character assassination against targeted individuals." The book loses steam when the authors present their prescription for social media's future, but this preachy conclusion shouldn't deter readers who are interested in how social media works and how to use it effectively. Agent: Gillian MacKenzie, Gillian MacKenzie Agency. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A manifesto of sorts, proclaiming that the ubiquity of social media is not necessarily the end of the world, Luddites notwithstanding, even if those media need to be cajoled into a healthier state.Luckett, formerly head of innovation at Disney, and one-time Wall Street Journal columnist Casey (The Unfair Trade: How Our Broken Global Financial System Destroys the Middle Class, 2012, etc.), currently a senior fellow at MIT Media Labs Digital Currency Initiative, take a generally positive view of our connected, always-on digital world. However, pointing to Kim Kardashian butt shots and kitty videos, they caution, not all evolution is progress. Regardless, a swift evolution has glued us to our hand-held screens, and by the authors account, a sort of mass mind has spawned, patrolling the airwaves for ideas and deeds and punishing the bad while rewarding the good. Thus it is that when a Minneapolis dentist shot poor Cecil the Lion last year, the web came crashing down on him. It is as if the Social Organism recognized Walter Palmers behavior as a harmful foreign substance, write the authors, a threat that needed to be expelled, akin to the racist Confederate flag. So it is, as news travels less by media networks than by the peer-to-peer, instantly outraged spiderweb of Facebook and Instagram. The argument is the usual stuff of pop social science, in which carefully chosen anecdotes meet smatterings of fact. The approach is sometimes a little breezy and sometimes a little careless. It would seem ill advised, for instance, to characterize South Carolina shooter Dylann Roof as simply a white twenty-one-year-old redneck, though its certainly correct to observe that social media were supremely instrumental in channeling the grief and outrage of his murders into a campaign to remove Confederate symbols from the state house. Theres not much new here apart from some synthesis of current theories about meme proliferation and networking, but the book should interest cyberspace completists. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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