Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of five co-founders of the social networking website Facebook. Zuckerberg is the chairman and chief executive of Facebook, Inc.[4][5] His personal wealth, as of July 2015, is estimated to be $38.6 billion.[3] Zuckerberg receives a one-dollar salary as CEO of Facebook.[2]
Together with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, he launched Facebook from Harvard University's dormitory rooms.[6] The group then introduced Facebook onto other campuses nationwide and moved to Palo Alto, California shortly afterwards. In 2007, at the age of 23, Zuckerberg became a billionaire as a result of Facebook's success. The number of Facebook users worldwide reached a total of one billion in 2012. Zuckerberg was involved in various legal disputes that were initiated by others in the group, who claimed a share of the company based upon their involvement during the development phase of Facebook.
Since 2010, Time magazine has named Zuckerberg among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world as a part of its Person of the Year distinction.[7][8][9] In 2011, Zuckerberg ranked first on the list of the "Most Influential Jews in the World" by The Jerusalem Post.[10] Zuckerberg was played by actor Jesse Eisenberg in the 2010 film The Social Network, in which the rise of Facebook is portrayed.[11]
"And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights," he said. "These are all things that do not exist objectively, but they exist only in the stories that we tell and that we spread around. This is something very unique to us, perhaps the most unique feature of our species."
Zuckerberg explains his latest book-club pick on his personal Facebook page:
This book is a big history narrative of human civilization — from how we developed from hunter-gatherers early on to how we organize our society and economy today.
Following the Muqaddimah, which was a history from the perspective of an intellectual in the 1300s, Sapiens is a contemporary exploration of many similar questions. I'm looking forward to reading these different perspectives.
Zuckerberg's book club is growing into an introduction to sociology, with an emphasis on the potential of technology to take humanity into the next stage of its evolution.