The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life

Product Description "A must-read for business leaders and anyone who wants to understand all the implications of a social world."---Bob Iger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney CompanyFrom tech visionaries Oliver Luckett and 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 persisted 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. Review "If anyone can help us understand this digitally connected world, it's [Luckett and Casey]--and they don't disappoint.... The book offers a deeply informed and nuanced portrait of the social-media landscape, supported by numerous examples.....This is an overarching theory of social media, spanning disciplines from biology to anthropology to business to computer science... Compelling."―Booklist"Social media is the most obvious recent way that human life is being forever changed by technology. This book's brilliant unifying metaphor, the Social Organism (which is the converse of my mentor Marvin Minsky's book Society of Mind) illuminates how the ground is shifting beneath our feet. As Luckett and Casey conclude, social media will begin to act more and more like a global brain. The implications for our way of life, our governments, and our businesses are immense. I cannot recommend this book enough."―Ray Kurzweil, inventor, author, and futurist"The Social Organism's exploration of social media goes far beyond a recipe for clicks and 'likes' and presents a deeply convincing theory of how life is changing in the digital age, and how you can use social media not only to transform your business but to help change the world."―Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Sleep Revolution"In less than a decade, social media has gone from fringe to mainstream. In the next decade, it will reorder the ways people communicate, work together, trade, and pursue ideas. Luckett and Casey have written the quintessential guide to understanding our social future."―Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner, Andreessen Horowitz"When I started my first business in 1992, there was no social media. Today, no successful business is launched without a social strategy. This book is the best guide out there. Want to build a brand or a cause? S