"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 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.

"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 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.

Culture, politics, economics -- these are the three core activities of society. Social health depends on the harmonious interworking of these three activities, which, Steiner says, is possible only if they are sufficiently autonomous so each can find its own essential character. In his foreword, Joseph Weizenbaum observes that the framers of the U.S. Constitution understood this, at least in part, when they developed the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state. These essays cover a range of issues with special attention to money, the division of labor, human motivation, and education. They offer refreshing insights into the nature of modern society as well as guidance for solving today's pressing social problems.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of "The Ants" render the extraordinary lives of the social insects--ants, bees, wasps, and termites--in this visually spectacular volume. 110 color and 100 black-and-white illustrations.

Karl Marx and Max Stirner sought to overcome their mentor Georg Hegel in opposing ways, and by opposing each other. In Max Stirner Versus Karl Marx, Philip Breed Dematteis constructs an accessible while scholarly contrast to their conflicts.While this isn't the "last word" on such a far-reaching subject, it can serve as a strong "first word" for those new to the ideas of these great figures of the philosophical and political history of the West.

Over the past decade, advances in both molecular developmental biology and evolutionary ecology have made possible a new understanding of organisms as dynamic systems interacting with their environments. This innovative book synthesizes a wealth of recent research findings to examine how environments influence phenotypic expression in individual organisms (ecological development or 'eco-devo'), and how organisms in turn alter their environments (niche construction). A key argument explored throughout the book is that ecological interactions as well as natural selection are shaped by these dual organism-environment effects. This synthesis is particularly timely as biologists seek a unified contemporary framework in which to investigate the developmental outcomes, ecological success, and evolutionary prospects of organisms in rapidly changing environments. Organism and Environment is an advanced text suitable for graduate level students taking seminar courses in ecology, evolution, and developmental biology, as well as academics and researchers in these fields.

With stories that entertain as much as they inform, renowned evolutionist David Sloan Wilson outlines the basic principles of evolution and shows how, when properly understood, they can illuminate the length and breadth of creation, from the origin of life to the nature of religion. What is the biological reason for gossip? For laughter? For the creation of art? Why do dogs have curly tails? What can microbes tell us about morality? These and many other questions are tackled by Wilson in this witty and groundbreaking new book. Now everyone can move beyond the sterile debates about creationism and intelligent design to share Darwin’s panoramic view of animal and human life, seamlessly connected to each other. Evolution, as Wilson explains, is not just about dinosaurs and human origins, but about why all species behave as they do—from beetles that devour their own young, to bees that function as a collective brain, to dogs that are smarter in some respects than our closest ape relatives. And basic evolutionary principles are also the foundation for humanity’s capacity for symbolic thought, culture, and morality. In example after example, Wilson sheds new light on Darwin’ s grand theory and how it can be applied to daily life. By turns thoughtful, provocative, and daringly funny, Evolution for Everyone addresses some of the deepest philosophical and social issues of this or any age. In helping us come to a deeper understanding of human beings and our place in the world, it might also help us to improve that world.

This volume explores the interactions between organisms and their environments and how this “entanglement” is a fundamental aspect of all life. It brings together the work and ideas of historians, philosophers, biologists, and social scientists, uniting a range of new perspectives, methods, and frameworks for examining and understanding the ways that organisms and environments interact. The volume is organized into three main sections: historical perspectives, contested models, and emerging frameworks. The first section explores the origins of the modern idea of organism-environment interaction in the mid-nineteenth century and its development by later psychologists and anthropologists. In the second section, a variety of controversial models—from mathematical representations of evolution to model organisms in medical research—are discussed and reframed in light of recent questions about the interplay between organisms and environment. The third section investigates several new ideas that have the potential to reshape key aspects of the biological and social sciences. Populations of organisms evolve in response to changing environments; bodies and minds depend on a wide array of circumstances for their development; cultures create complex relationships with the natural world even as they alter it irrevocably. The chapters in this volume share a commitment to unraveling the mysteries of this entangled life.

Energy drives the economy, economics informs policy, and policy affects social outcomes. Since the oil crises of the 1970s, pundits have debated the validity of this sequence, but most economists and politicians still ignore it. Thus, they delude the public about the underlying influence of energy costs and constraints on economic policies that address such pressing contemporary issues as income inequality, growth, debt, and climate change. To understand why, Carey King explores the scientific and rhetorical basis of the competing narratives both within and between energy technology and economics. Energy and economic discourse seems to mirror Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion: For every narrative there is an equal and opposite counter-narrative. The competing energy narratives pit "drill, baby, drill!" against renewable technologies such as wind and solar. Both claim to provide secure, reliable, clean, and affordable energy to support economic growth with the most benefit to society, but how? To answer this question, we need to understand the competing economic narratives, techno-optimism and techno-realism. Techno-optimism claims that innovation overcomes any physical resource constraints and enables the social outcomes and economic growth we desire. Techno-realism, in contrast, states that no matter what energy technologies we use, feedbacks from physical growth on a finite planet constrain economic growth and create an uneven distribution of social impacts. In The Economic Superorganism, you will discover stories, data, science, and philosophy to guide you through the arguments from competing narratives on energy, growth, and policy. You will be able to distinguish the technically possible from the socially viable, and understand how our future depends on this distinction.

Although this book was first published in 1919, it remains highly relevant to social problems encountered today. Uniquely, Steiner's social thinking is not based on intellectual theory, but on a profound perception of the archetypal spiritual nature of social life. As he suggests in this classic work, society has three distinct realms - the economic, the political (individual human rights), and the cultural (spiritual). While social life as a whole is a unity, the autonomy of these three sectors should be respected if our increasing social problems are to be resolved. Steiner relates the ideals of 'liberty, equality and fraternity' to modern society. Economics calls for fraternity (brotherhood), political rights require equality, while culture should be characterised by liberty (freedom). The slogans of the French Revolution, he suggests, can only become truly manifest if our social thinking is transformed to correspond to the spiritual reality.