The social organism : a radical understanding of social media to transform your business and life / Oliver Luckett and Michael J. Casey

Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-279) and index.

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.

"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 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"-- Provided by publisher.