Books Worth Re-Viewing: The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell’s the Tipping Point caused quite a stir back in 2000 when it was originally published. Largely based on psychologist Stanely Milgram’s 1967 “Six Degrees of Separation” study, the Tipping Point sought to connect social networks and epidemics to modern business. Gladwell proposed that social epidemics and stickiness could be engineered by leveraging the skills of certain types of communicators, and by managing environmental factors. Far from being a prescriptive solution that would produce perfect results for every advertising or marketing campaign, it did remind of us of the power of social networks in disseminating a message about a product or service.
The Tipping Point has become particularly relevant during this time of economic unrest when most of the news we hear is bad. Good news (if you have it) can travel faster and farther than it once could when the networks were clogged with every company’s good story. So, we would like to re-view the Tipping Point and offer you the opportunity to share some good news.
We have used Mindomo, a mind mapping tool to present our re-view of the Tipping Point here:
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Gladwell’s reference to Dunbar’s Number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number) in Tipping Point piqued my interest about 6 years ago. Indeed, it led me to explore sociometrics and social network literature (I highly recommend Professor Nan Lin’s 2002 book Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure, especially chapters 11 and 12). Wanting to review the idea in its original form, I also read Robin Dunbar’s essays on the links between primates’ neocortex size and the number of stable relationships they could have, as well as a few responses to it, about 6 years ago.
Dunbar’s theories were developed before our modern Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 systems, systems which have markedly changed the ways we manage our social networks. And I doubt Dunbar’s working assumptions in his papers still hold for humans using Web 3.0 systems.
Though human neocortex sizes haven’t changed since the early 1990s, our social networking tools and the environments in which we use those tools have. Now, it is much easier, as in much less laborious, for us to connect with others and manage our stable relationships.
Is Dunbar’s Number, approximately 150, still the right number in a Web 3.0, soon to be Web 4.0 era? Or have the markedly decreased costs of social network management decreased or increased the maximum average number of people we can maintain stable relationships with? I’m betting they have increased the number. And if they have increased the number, that might mean information, good and bad and neutral, not only can and does travel faster now than ever before, but also that tipping points and trends can and do come and go faster than ever before.
I have some ideas on what this phenomenon, if it exists, will likely mean for businesses in industries that are most influenced by the frequencies and durations of social network-driven tipping points and trends, but I’ve yet to write those ideas down. Maybe I’ll get to around to it after law school.
Yes, I would be interested in your thoughts on the subject. Certainly, if we continue down the web “n”.0 path the human brain will have to most certainly adapt. This radical change to how we interact will probably be one of the most significant adaptations since we have become “modern” humans. Exciting times ahead.
Thanks for the comment.
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I think this article was very informative.