People have just assumed that... if we call our Facebook acquaintances our friends, we must be influenced by them, too. But we're not.

It used to be thought that our genes were historically immutable and that it was not possible to imagine a conversation between culture and genetics.

Social media and the Internet haven't changed our capacity for social interaction any more than the Internet has changed our ability to be in love or our basic propensity to violence, because those are such fundamental human attributes.

I like to have met someone in real life before being their Facebook friend.

It is well to look around at whom, and not just what, surrounds us. Population structure will change everything. Our health, wealth, and peace depend on it.

It is the spread of the good things that vindicates the whole reason we live our lives in networks. If I was always violent to you or gave you germs, you would cut the ties to me and the network would disintegrate. In a deep and fundamental way, networks are connected to goodness, and goodness is required for networks to emerge and spread.

People have just assumed that... if we call our Facebook acquaintances our friends, we must be influenced by them, too. But we're not.