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Mindcore
New Member
USA
11 Posts |
 Posted - 02/11/2008 : 05:41:00
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Worth a read.
Why is The Tipping Point worth a read, well for one it will help you understand a way to get things done if it involves humans. The Tipping
Point though clearly a book based on scientific research, was purchased by me from the business section of the bookstore.
Whether or not Gladwell meant to, he wrote a book about meme theory.
Meme theory is basically this, human activity behaves like a virus, or bacteria, in the sense that it replicates fast, and yet has changes in its many offspring, and that those different offspring have different probabilities of survival.
Some memes succeed so well, just like viruses and bacteria, that they cause social epidemics.
Gladwell takes examples like the hush puppies trend in the 90s, Airwalk shoes fads, smoking, suicide, crime rates, Blues Clues, Sesame Street, and other cases of meme epidemics.
Now, Gladwell never uses the word meme.
He talks about how certain personality traits spread human activity epidemics, he talks about connectors, salesmen, mavens, and how each of these types of people govern nearly all of our social behavior.
He also talks about how epidemics thrive or die according to subtle environmental cues, and therefore how said epidemics can potentially be managed, created, and stopped.
According to research cited by Gladwell
Connectors are the people who introduce us to everyone we know.
Salesmen are the people we imitate most often in our social circle.
And Mavens are the people who we go to for our information.
So what does that mean to you?
Well that's why I think its worth a read. If you have to deal with people in an organized kind of way, then things would pan out better if you think along the lines of the research cited in this book.
Several years ago I tried to start a leftwing political movement in Lubbock Texas, a city so conservative, that if you believed that children deserve free dental care if they otherwise can't afford it, you were a wild eyed liberal.
If I wanted to try it again, I would first find the connectors among the groups I ran with and have parties with them regular. Parties with drinking, music, and Dionysian indulgment. That would have gotten large groups together regularly. Then I would have tracked the mavens to try to find out what was most pertinenent to the most people at the time. Then I would have gone to work among the salesmen as hard as I could.
I think if I did this Lubbock would resemble Austin culturally in 20 years. But I have other things I'd rather do for the next 20 years.
Check the book out. None of you will regret it.
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The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell
