Like: The Button That Changed The World

 

Credit - Like: The Button That Changed The World

Reeves (The Imagination Machine), chairman of the corporate think tank BCG Henderson Institute, and Goodson, founder of the data analytics company Quid, join forces for a stimulating inquiry into the creation and consequences of the “like” button. They trace the button’s unlikely path to digital ubiquity, describing how in the mid-2000s, news aggregator Digg.com’s distillation of feedback into “digg” and “bury” options foreshadowed the thumbs up/down binary, and how Mark Zuckerberg refused to introduce a like button to Facebook until 2009 because he worried it would undermine his site’s share feature. Exploring the like button’s neurological effects, Reeves and Goodson note studies finding that both liking someone else’s post and receiving likes on social media boosts dopamine levels, which the authors attribute to the evolutionary impulse to share information and reward others who do the same. The authors don’t shy from their subject’s darker side, lamenting that it enables data brokers to track and sell information on individuals’ preferences, and that it may contribute to political polarization by feeding algorithms that create online echo chambers. Credit: Like: The Button That Changed The World.