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

by Oliver Luckett, Michael J. Casey

"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 Company

From 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 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.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Social Media, Society, Technology, Science

336 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 2016

Reviews

[Lyubov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Специално бих искала да откроя три теми, които ми бяха изключително интересни и полезни. С някои от тях вече бях запозната отчасти, а други се оказаха изцяло нови за мен.

- Страниците, посветени на зараждането, разпространението и факторите, които подпомагат достигането на масова популярност на онлайн меметата и хаштаговете.

- Анализа на все по-масовата тенденция милениалите (родените през 80-те и 90-те години) и поколението Z (родените между 1995 и 2009 г) да мигрират преобладаващо към Snapchat.

- Разяснението какво представлява и за какво служи онлайн валутата Биткойн.

Цялото ревю: http://www.vibes.bg/%d0%a1%d0%be%d1%8...

[Alexander Krastev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ако имах собствено издателство, щях да издавам само такива книги. "Социалният организъм" не е за това как да ползвате социалните мрежи, а за това как те ни "ползват", работейки като единен организъм със свои вътрешни закони. Така де, ако от години антрополозите приемат, че обществата са организми, какво пречи един биолог, преквалифицирал се в дигитален експерт, да прави подобни твърдения и за социалните мрежи. И успява!
Книгата на Оливър Лъкет и Майкъл Дж. Кейси ползва основите, поставени от Ричард Докинс в "Себичният ген", за да говори за мемичен код вместо за генетичен код. Проследява генезиса на мемите като форма на взаимодействие в обществото и ни дава поводи да мечтаем за промени в този мемичен код, които "да направят света още по-добро място". (Между другото, на български бих ползвал "меметичен код", ако ще запазваме струкутрата на термина, идващ от науката за мемите меметика) И разбира се, също търси формулата за успех в социалните мрежи и как едно съдържание става вирусно (тук е ясно към кой алхимик на вирусното да се обръщате - преподавателя в Wharton Джона Бъргър и неговия труд "Заразително: Защо нещата набират популярност")
За съжаление "Социалният организъм" остава на ръба на истинската наука, защото липсва представителен доказателствен материал на по-голяма част от твърденията на авторите. Всеки, който се занимава със социални мрежи или друг вид дигитална комуникация, обаче ще се съгласи с немалка част от тезите им.
Вероятно през цялото време на четене ще имате усещането, че държите в ръцете си учебник по биология. Моята единствена надежда е, че ще изпитате съжаление че истинските ви учебници не са били толкова интересни. Примерите на Лъкет и Кейси, идващи от техния бизнес опит, не само ще ви забавляват, но и ще ви разяснят защо някои от звездите в развлекателния бизнес са звезди и в онлайн пространството, а други просто не успяват. Ще ви разведат от зората на медиите (камбанният звън като notification от социална мрежа) до изчезващата моментна комуникация, ще ви поговорят за това как църквата модерира обществения разговор и ще ви поведат на борба с "патогените" в социалните мрежи - онези отровни статуси от тролове и злонамерени потребители, които могат да ви вгорчат деня.
Това, което не трябва да пропускате, се намира в последните две глави. Дори средната част леко да ви е досадила, сегментите за бъдещето и участието на социалния организъм в него са задължителни (и доста интересни). Ще ще успеят ли Facebook и Google да се адаптират към желанията на новото поколение потребители, ще изчезнат ли останалите социални платформи, ще могат ли онлайн гигантите да налагат тотална цензура и можем ли наистина да осигурим "безцензурно" съществуване на свободен интернет, трябва ли да се плашим от свързаните устройства и интернет на нещата... Важни въпроси, не мислите ли?
Ще го обобщя така - "Социалният организъм" на Оливър Лъкет и Майкъл Дж. Кейси ще ви даде много повече, отколкото сте очаквали при започването й.

[Michael Berquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book from Goodreads in return for an honest review:

Luckett and Casey's The Social Organism is one of the most fascinating books I have read this year, possibly ever. Luckett, a media entrepreneuer and CEO, and Casey, a journalist, theorize that today's social media world shares the same structure as human biology. In nine chapters, the authors expand upon this theory to share how social media users can use the medium to improve the world based on natural biology.

This book reads similarly to Freakonomics, with many real world examples that are interesting and captivating. I know very little about biology but this book explained the science very clearly and accessibly.

In the wake of recent political events, this book is a positive and passionate guide for how to improve the world and analyze the truth of social media habits and practices.

This book is a must read for every social media entrepreneur and daily user of social media. It will make you see the world in a new light and give you ideas about sharing positivity and making the virtual and real world, a better place

[Devin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is full of dense, biological jargon; a style that I have never gravitated towards. I know Its the purpose of the book, but I didn't care much for the comparisons to the social organism; I cared about what they had to say about social media. There were a few things I learned, but the majority of this was very science based, making it a dull read overall.


Notes/Highlights:

Hashtags, photos, and shared cartoons and videos spread and value systems evolve in the age of social media (xvii). Those who don't adjust to this new communications architecture will be left behind (p.xix).

The word "meme" was introduced by Richard Dawkins (p.xxvii).

The first instinct of brand builders for public figures, top companies, and artists is often to cut off information flow to maintain proprietorial control and "exclusivity" of the information (xxxii).

"Social media represents the most advanced state yet in the evolution of human communication"(p.xxxvii).

"If you get nothing else from this book, embrace the notion that the world--including its human-built social networks---is an incredibly complex system (p.5).

Printing press unleashed something that would ultimately expand people's access to powerful ideas very different from those laid down (by Rome). The printing press broke the class structure that the Church had forged. It laid the path to a middle class, a new educated group open to alternative ideas about how to organize society and comprehend the world. And to service their need for such ideas, another powerful idea sprung forth, one that harnessed the bast new published power unleashed by Gutenberg: mass media.
As a growing literate population demanded information that was independently delivered, a new breed of writers and edition arose: journalists. Inspired by the liberal philosophies of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Locke, and John Stuart Mil, they offered fresh description and explanations of politics and culture without care for whether they complied with the worldview authorities (p.18).

Social media represents a more evolved state for we are saying is that social media represents a more evolved stat for society's mass communication architecture (p.20).

Social media began with email and instant messaging which made sending a letter redundant and drastically cut the time for text-based communication. Rather than one-to-one communication, these innovations allowed for one-to-many message dumps (p.23). It was a new paradigm: People were sharing their thoughts with the world at large without requiring the authorization of a publishing gatekeeper (p.26).

Cost per impression (CPM) (p.28).
Newspaper revenues are less than half what they were ten years ago and the number of newsroom employees in the United States has dropped to below 36,700 from 56,400 in 2000. "This is what extinction looks like when our communication architecture undergoes rapid evolution." (p.28).
Encouraging ever-wider webs of human interconnection became the MO of any social media platform company (p.29).

In 2011, News Corp. sold Myspace to a group of investors that included singer/actor Justin Timberlake (p.33). Youtube, which Google acquired in 2006, that became the dominant platform video (p.34). Facebook, which since its launch in 2004 has swelled its user base to a mind-numbing 1.5 billion.
Trying to censor any speech i not only likely to fail but is harmful to our cultural development (p.36). LinkedIn's profitability stems from a business model that escapes the dependence on advertising by charging premium fees for special features (p.37). Tumblr, the Yahoo!-owned micro-blogging social media platform, has a more laissez-faire approach. That it also happens to be a vibrant platform for avant-garde artists and animators to collaborate and push the boundaries of creativity is no coincidence (p.39). The initial surge in popularity for Snapchat was in part about not wanting to produce a trail of behavior for others to later judge you by--whether it's your future employer or your future lover--but it was also about living in the moment (p.40). Snapchat represents carefree silliness and fleeting expressiveness.
A 2014 poll by Sparks % Honey showed a clear preference among Generation Z kids (those born after 1995) for Snapchat and other secrecy-enhancing services such as Whisper and Secret compared with more public platforms (p.40).

Google Chrome is the most popular Web browser; in 2016, Gmail surpassed more than 1 billion monthly active users, making it the most used email service (p.42).

Vine star Nash Grier joins a host of Generation Z-ers and Millenials producing voyeuristic glimpses into their lives, a genre that's suited to short-form Vines and short-lived Snapchat messages. Vine's jumpy, low-budget aesthetic, which eschews the brash glamour of Hollywood celebrities and instead contrives the start as an every man, is the format's magic sauce (p.53).

Lele Pons is the highest ranking female Viner, with more than 10 million followers and the largest number of total loops overall at 7.5 billion. The world's most successful Viner, Andrew Bachelor, better known as King Bach (15 million followers, 5.6 billion loops). Vine is also an oddly successful platform for music promotion (p.54). PewDiePie has40.9 million subscribers and over 11 billion views on his videos, he earned $4 million in 2014 (p.55). Social media influencers' power is founded on the trust and emotional connection they've built with their fans and friends (p.58). Social media starts are nothing without the cooperation of the their followers and of the privately owned platform where they distribute their content.

To be effective and sustainable, the social network needs to be constantly maintained and nurtured for the re-blogs, re-tweets, re-posts, and shares to keep going (p.61). Since social media occupies a Holonic structure in which the autonomous members of the network represent both the target audience and the distribution systems, emotions are now the primary tool for spreading ideas and artistic works (p.64).

"I view such meme-making [Grumpy Cat, "Success Kid" , "Bad Luck Brain"] as the first real mass collaborative art form, with the organism driving their evolution as the underlying memetic code mutates (p.84). "Like a haiku or sonnet, for a social media comparative, a 140 character tweet or 6 second Vine, this confining structure has given rise to a specific art form that becomes an avenue for creativity (p.86).

Majority of the more than 4 million e-books titles available in Amazon's Kindle store are now self-published books, some of which manage to break through and become bestsellers with the aid of the company's algorithm-driven promotional tools (p.91).

When the Church ran its top-down network, there was a limited number of sanctioned artists and the mediums available to them--the painter's canvas, the writer's book, the sculptor's some--were not designed for rapid or wide distribution of their messages. Art was for elites, which meant its impact on cultural change was slow. Later, print, television, and other pre-Internet mass media outlets accelerated the process--The Beatles could go on The Ed Sullivan Show and quickly affect the fashion and social mores of American youth (p.93).

It's the message that's paramount, the content that will dictate whether a meme is fit enough to survive (p.101). The demand for meme jokes, for example, reflects the Social Organism's collective desire for positive hormonal releases--since smiling and laughing have been shown scientifically to trigger these neurotransmitters (p.104).

The most blatant performative act in the social media realm is arguably the selfie (p.122). Engage positively with social media, not negatively, for the alter will only fuel knee-jerker, countervailing responses, which can escalate into full-blown ill will. "To my celebrity clients, I've always said 'Don't feed the trolls.' If you ignore those whose comments and tweets seem designed solely to provoke anger, thus starving them of the attention they crave, they will cease their infuriating behavior" (p.128). If you want to create an appealing persona and a positive impression among certain people or target markets, then the content you feed them should convey that positivity (p.128). The social organism needs to be fed; the more it is fed, the more it grows (p.129).
Now in the social media era, the ability to stir up emotion is as important as ever to the success of any piece of content. (p.133) A Wharton Business School showed that our responses to a piece of online content will fluctuate depending on the type of emotion that it elicits. While a message with an angry tone, with its capacity for adrenaline release, might be an especially strong motivator for someone to hit the retweet button, it's not a healthy source of sustenance over the long term. (p.134). The kind of content that best succeeds within the social media architecture is not based in fear, sadness, or fury.
Content needs to be delivered in a nonlinear object-based narrative form.
The starting point for figuring out how not to inadvertently foster negativity around your brand must be an understanding that social media is a living, breathing organism (p.135). Let the social organism think for itself (p.137). On social media you can't tell people what to think. Dogma invites negativity (p.138).
42% of those who attended the Toy Story 3 movie (marketed by the authors) were motivated not by some expensively produced ads they'd seen on TV, or even by the word-of-mouth advice of their friends, but by Disney's virtually cost-less direct postings on Facebook (p.139).

On social media platforms the "like" buttons and emoticon response option offered to readers are nearly always limited to positive expressions. We can, of course, express opposition in comments, but the basic architecture of social media trends to promote like-mindedness (p.146).

One way to healthier, more positively inclined social media environment, then, is simply to encourage a greater abundance of emotionally positive, uplifting content (p.156)
"I like to think of Humans of New York (HONY) as an empathy replicator. We need to build more of them. Activist, policymakers, educators, journalists, even corporate brands could follow this model (p.158).
There's strong evidence that, with the rise of the Internet and social media, society has become more tolerant and less violent. If we use this technology well, it should help us to transcend our social fragmentation and push his new digital society toward a more inclusive future (p.161).
All living things adapt and evolve. If we want society to grow up, and if we want to turn social media into a constructive forum for improving human existence, then we must expose ourselves to the "diseases" of hate, intolerance, and intimidation that persist in our culture. It makes for a powerful case against censorship (p.168).

Pew Research Center's studies on same-sex marriage show more than 55% in support in 2015. Two-thirds of Americans say they"would be fine" with a member of their family marrying someone of a different race. In 1986 the figure was only 33%. A more recent study of Millennial showed an even higher acceptance level, with nine in ten saying they'd be happy with a family member marrying outside their race (p.169).

Our culture is evolving at a faster pace, and that acceleration, we contend, is a function of the co-mingling of thoughts and memes (p.170).

*Research by the University of Houston has shown that increased use of Facebook contributes to an uptick in depression via a phenomenon known as "social comparison" (p.192). "These entities now have a profound responsibility to the rest of society (p.193)...Facebook takes the content that you and I produce, pays us nothing for it and then organizes, censors, and repackages it for sale to advertisers, who fees it keeps for itself." (p.194)
"You are not Facebook's customer, you are its product." - Bruce Schneier

Millennials and Generation Z are going to Snapchat, which by April 2016 was seeing 10 billion video views a day (p.200). If the Social Organism doesn't get what it wants from a particular platform, it will move (p.201).
A January 2016 survey by GlobalWebIndex found that 38% of Internet users had used ad blocking in the fourth quarter of 2015 (p.204). Some news sites now block their own content when they detect someone using an ad blocker, betting that readers will disengage the ad blocker rather than miss out on news. At stake is a business model that dates back to 1704, when the Boston News-Letter published, for a fee, a small announcement advertising the sale of a local property. From those humble beginnings a symbiotic relationship between the business community and the providers of information emerged (p.205).

Bitcoin- digital currency (p.206).
Blockchain- a cryptographically protected, incorruptible ledger that's distributed along a network of independently owned computers, all of which are tasked with verifying and updating its contents according to a set of software-regulated rules that incentivize them to act honestly and to agree on the veracity of the shared information.
"Total strangers on either side of the world can exchange value without either side having to trust that the other isn't digitally counterfeiting the money or secretly copying and sharing the song or artwork with someone else." (p.207). Multiplied over billions of such transactions, digital-currency micro-payments could offer a viable, non-advertising-dependent revenue stream for the media industry (p.209). Another key innovation is the blockchain's capacity for creators of digital content to prove that they and only they are the owners of an original work forever. By irrefutably identifying data in this way, the artist can turn their work into a true digital asset,version of which can be bought, sold, and owned as distinct items, as we used to do with vinyl records and still do the physical books.

The most popular game of 2015, according to many polls, was Undertale (p.217). The entire experience is infused with a sense of ethical responsibility (p.218).
League of Legends is the world's most popular game. Management founded a "Tribunal", a forum where players could create case files of chat logs that documented inappropriate behavior; anyone could discuss and vote on what language was unacceptable and what was positive for the community. 100 million votes were cast, the vast majority demonstrating an overwhelming aversion to hate speech and homophobic slurs. Verbal abuse dropped by more than 40% and 91.6 of negative players change their act and never commit another offense after just one reported penalty (p.219).

Social media offers a completely new way of rapidly unleashing, sharing, and deploying information. It is especially powerful when combined with other decentralizing technologies such as cloud-based data storage, Big Data analysis, cryptography, machine-learning tools, open data protocols, and blockchain ledgers (p.227).

Kickstart, as of early 2016,bhad raised more than $2 billion for over 100,000 projects (p.228). As digital-currency applications for transferring money combine with block chain based systems for securely issuing and trading, people will gain a newfound confidence that they are not being defrauded (p.229).

"To be sure, as we mine social media to discover who we are, it's probably unwise to just set some A.I. machine loose on the network to figure things out. Microsoft's experiment with a machine-learning Twitter bot offers a cautionary tale (A.I. account opened on March 23, 2016 in the form of a model teenage girl named Tay evolved into Hitler sympathizing, feminism hating, and conspiracy theorist believing the Holocaust was "made up" and "9/11 was an inside job". (p.234) .

[Nestor Georgiev Nestorov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Беше доста интересна особено за модифицираните днк и 3д принтери които ще възпроизвеждат органи ... интересно ми беше за експеримента на майкрософт за изкуствен интелект Тай. Както и мега събирачите на данни фейсбук и туитър.

[Gints Dreimanis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of the text is useless, libertarian, full with buzzwords, and they even talk about Bitcoin. Full combo!

Nice analogy tho.

[Connor]

I enjoyed the introduction to this book. The author concisely related the understanding of social media to the larger scale internet media. After this section, I felt the author started to drag on about the same topic for many pages. It was hard to stay focused on what was happening, especially with all the technical wording being used.

[Ангел · Rating 2 out of 5]

Забавно в първите страници, статистика, полезна информация, интересна препратка към биологията и механизмите на madre de natura и разбира се разбиването на теми табу с най-обикновен #-таг.

След това, кигата става еднообразно повтарящо се кречетало. Разочарован, но все пак обогатен, но не като уран 235.

[Terence · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing.

The subtitle of this book is 'A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform your Business and Life". We are introduced to a metaphor and the objective is left unaccomplished.

The authors have an impressive background in social media advertising and therefore I was hopeful. Unfortunately, they provide little information related to their core competency and focus exclusively on articulating a metaphor for social media. Speaking largely about topics of which they have no background.

The attempts at articulating a future that is transforming sounds a lot like positive thinking and big government.

Unfortunately, I can't recommend this book.

[Marcus Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m happy I went with the audio version of this book. Much of it would have went over my head otherwise.

I enjoyed the comparisons and similarities the authors notes with this book.

Comparing life/science with social media was a magnificent comparison.

I liked how they were able to relay their points to varying situations in life and make sense of some of the large & more difficult to understand concepts.

[Omar M. Khateeb · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book that every business leader and futurist needs to read. Social media is shaping the culture of the human race and understanding its complexities is vital to moving forward collectively.

Just finished "The Social Organism"

Big idea - Social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit) remarkably resemble and mimic the rules and functions found in biology. Just as DNA replicates, these social networks replicate cultural information and turn them into memes. This is then facilitating an evolutionary process just like the transfer of genetic information in living things except it's cultural information transferred into the minds of human beings. Memes are thus basic building blocks of our culture and the foundation of our social DNA. The book dives deep into the social organism and how content on social media impacts the world we live and the perception of it.

Key Takeaways:
-The future of social media should be one of humanity's dominant concerns.

-Social media represents the highest evolved distribution system for human communication. It lives and breathes off the emotional exchanges that define the human condition.

-The formation of knowledge and virality of memes depends on the human mind to recognize patterns. An idea (or meme) cannot gain traction if there is no preceding, related idea for it to latch on to.

-Blockchain is a step towards preserving the autonomy of the billion-plus human cells within the social organism and will encourage the multitude of ongoing interactions between them to be healthy.

-The key element for all systems in the social organism is communication, the signaling mechanism for the cause-and-effect responses that shape a group's behavior.

-Humility in the face of complexity is the trait that can help us as a group to collectively gain the most from the system. Humility implies respect for everyone else, empathy, compassion, and most of all, tolerance for difference. The catch 22 is that the system derives its power from individualism, from the diversity of its billion-node makeup. Community and diversity are two sides of the same coin.

[Dessislava Chouchoulain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Книгата е в стилистиката на дисертация, научен труд, в който всяка хипотеза за Социалния организъм е подкрепена от много факти. За жалост не открих достатъчно примери от ежедневната комуникация на медийни гиганти, рекламни послания, глобални брандове и тяхното поведение в социалните медии. Очаквах малко повече от практиката, от кухнята на поведението на известни личности в Социалния организъм. Книгата обобщава всичко онова, което вече сме чували, чели, виждали и бих казала, че не дава някаква кой знае каква прогноза за развитието на Социалния организъм. Генералното заключение е, че Той обича разнообразието и не трябва да бъде "затварян" и ограничаван като взаимодействие между изграждащите го "микроорганизми" от хората, които държат в ръцете си голямата власт на социалните медии като Facebook и Youtube.

[Tristan Krass · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the second contendor for the worst book in 2017 with Ronaldo book. The book just talked about social media and how some posts go viral and how some people earn money with that. Being millenial kid and having facebook account since I was little means that the stuff really wasn't so new for me. I still got to know that Swift and Mendes have really loyal fanbase and that's why they always have sold out concerts. I think this book would be great for somebody who is not so familiar with social media and wants to know the ins and outs of it.

[Vasco · Rating 4 out of 5]

The bad: the books is not terribly sexy. It's, both on a macro and micro level an analogy with biology and viruses and diseases, and the scientific writing style isn't always easy or satisfying to read.

The good: it's original in its premise and goes deep in certain topics such as the replication of memes or the consequences of control in organs such as Facebook. It's also fairly wide, covering different aspects. It's a good, interesting read overall.

[Pranali Mehta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initial chapters are very intriguing and knowledgeable. But as the book proceeds, the last chapters either become a repetition or become too technical to comprehend for a non-IT background person.
Overall, the analogy of social network with human biology is an excellent way of understanding the concept.
A must read for anyone interested in understanding the nitty-gritties of social media.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good real. The authors take on the social media is unlike any other analogy. The only thing I didn’t not enjoy was the political undertone. The authors views were evident and it did not feel relevant or necessary for the book.

[reni · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting but verbose

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's an interesting concept to equate the social web with the biological inner workings of cells. It was just too much scientific jargon for me. And mostly skimmed after the first few chapters.

[Jozie Jewelz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and insightful

There's lots to think about here. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in science, suicidal media, or technology in general.

[Mina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Книга с изключително много полезна информация! Има доста препратките към биологията, но идеята не се губи в тях.

[Berkeley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for 2016/2017. Probably one of the most important books of this decade.

[Tyler Adam]

The Social Organism was a quick read with some great tips for anyone doing any regular social media promotion. Very holistic look I found. I learned a thing or two.

[Maxwell Austin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oliver Luckett may have been a talented scientific thinker when he grew up, but now he's a cryptobro. Lots of his analogies to science are dated at best, and his acknowledgement of pseudoscientific principles like "Left Brainedness" call the rest of what he says into question.

From the first page, his biology analogy is flawed: He uses "Evolve" as a synonym for change, which, if it was outside of an attempt to project social media onto biological principles, since in the concept of the biological idea of evolution, an individual does not evolve, a species does. Evolution does not happen in a individual during their life time, but rather over multiple generations. Because of his misunderstanding / missuse of the term in the context he is attempting to use it, much of what he says comes off as cringe. Just use the word change.

He also references crypto and block chain alot, which is funny reading in 2022, since crypto bros are so widely hated on and made fun of. While I do agree with some of his libertarian takes like not regulating speech, alot of what he says is dumb. Ultimately, he is a capitalist through and through, and as a result pretty much anything he says is sort of detached from reality, as to support capitalism you must exist outside of the reality of the majority.

Alot of reviews say that its very "scientific", which to someone who isn't currently in high school it may seem, but don't be fooled. His analogies lowkey suck.

Also, theres one point where he references a CPG Gray video and says "He may not have realized it, but he was talking about memes" and its ultra cringe, because he's creating this word and then expecting other people to retroactively know the word who he has adopted to the meaning he places on it. As a Gen Z, its funny because he's old and talking about memes, but thats not a discredit to his work.

At one point he talks about astroturfing for Obama without realizing how funny it is to admit that proudly.

He has some good takes on social media, but his biology analogy, which is at the center of his work, fails, making this all in all a waste of time.

[Aileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting, informative and positive look at Social Media as a living evolving organism. This book is very accessible, fun to read, and broad in spectrum. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in a deeper understanding of the future, and evolution of human interaction in harmony and alignment with the natural world.

[GreenTieRationalist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audiobook review

This was an easy to follow, interesting and well researched book.

Most of the book was a possibly successful attempt at confirming a hypothesis that the social media organism acts in the same way as an organic organism making detailed references to Dawkin's Selfish Gene.

The ideas on how social media platforms could and should look like in the future towards the end of the book was especially interesting.

I also thought the criticisms of facebook were very valid due to the case presented

I marked this book down however because of the following 2 points
- Unlike what the cover implies, there is very little advise on how business managers would apply knowledge of this hypothesis when using social media
- Clear unnecessary political bias, the narrow minded praise of BLM and demonisation of Trump and Milo are very subjective and didn't fit with the rest of the book that was done as objective analysis manner as it approached various topics

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Social Organism is an interesting look at social media and how it adapts and transforms based on how we interact with it. Are we changing it, or is it changing us? Or is it a little bit of both? I enjoyed reading the book and have even considered ideas from it while planning media literacy lessons. I recommend The Social Organism for anyone who uses social media but especially for those who interact with it in their professional lives.

[Skyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intricate and hopeful. I appreciate that the authors like Black Lives Matter and dislike Donald Trump.

[Aarif Billah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love it !
Although I prefer Gary Vee better.

Here a link to my reading notes. (P.S. beware of spoiler)

https://aarifbillah.com/the-social-or...

[Max Lapin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hard to read, but extremely insightful book on how the social organism of internet resembles evolutionary history of life. Which, undoubtedly, leads to inescapable changes in how we relate, communicate, find work, do job and make business.