An entertaining and eye-opening look into the new frontier of idea makingBreaking news, fresh gossip, tiny scandals, trumped up crises— every day we are distracted by a culture that rings our doorbell and then runs away. Stories spread wildly and die out in mere days, quickly replaced by more stories with ever shorter shelflives. How we participate in these stories has changed, too. No longer do we sit on the sidelines waiting for monolithic media giants to tell us what's happening. Anyone on a computer in his or her local Starbucks can spread a story almost as easily as The New York Times, CNN, or People—in fact blogs are now often the source for journalists working in big media. And Then There's This is Bill Wasik's journey along the unexplored frontier of our churning and rambunctious viral culture. Covering this world—watching new bands promote themselves at South by Southwest; reporting on a Web site contest while secretly entering it; and creating a site that aggregates...