“ Of course, we can do this because, as the neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni puts it, much of our mental apparatus is highly tuned to the other people who populate the world we inhabit: in the game show of life on earth, ‘other people’ is our specialist subject. This is also what lies behind the renewed popularity of Jackson’s music. It’s popular because it seems that other people find it popular (as Yahoo’s Duncan Watts has previously demonstrated is the case for most popular music). Finally, it just shows that we are — that’s right — a supremely social species. Very quickly, we find new and admittedly often tasteless ways to use the thing — in this case, Jackson’s demise — to interact with other people; to turn the news, to use the current jargon, into a ‘social object’. Alas, poor Michael. It turns out that even though we didn’t know him at all, he’s provided us with another great set of excuses to do what we humans do best — interact with others. Lord knows what the public funeral will bring.
