social phenomena

Evolution and Goodness

Radiolab podcast: An Equation for Good.

Books = data.

``Quantitative analysis of culture using millions of digitized books'' by Michel et al., Science, 2011.
More here: http://www.culturomics.org/
Data and play here: Google Books ngram viewer

The invention of Money.

The mystery of money. This American Life, #423:

The biologists are evolving!

What will they become? Memeticists?

The story: culture is becoming recognized as one of the significant evolutionary forces shaping human evolution.

Some puzzling maps:

What?

Empireal disintegration.


Social contagion, a review

The New York Times looks back at the work of Christakis and Fowler on social contagion.

Identity, Self-Awareness, and Twitter

From the New York Times Magazine, a great, mutlifacted article about how we communicate online.