01: The Future of Social Media

Host of this season’s The World as You’ll Know It, Kurt Andersen, speaks with Sinan Aral, professor at MIT and author of “The Hype Machine,” about the promise and peril of social media, and the ways it tricks our brains into wanting more. 

SINAN ARAL is the David Austin Professor of Management, Marketing, IT, and Data Science at MIT; director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy; and head of MIT’s Social Analytics Lab. He is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the author of “The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and How We Must Adapt.”

A transcript of this episode is available at Aventine.org.