The Social Organism

August 29, 2016
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.

September 15, 2016
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 Lab's 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 Palmer's 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 it's 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. There's not much new here apart from some synthesis of current theories about meme proliferation and networking, but the book should interest cyberspace completists.

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November 1, 2016
Luckett and Casey are established authorities in the world of social media. If anyone can help us understand this digitally connected world, it's themand 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)