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Yule Heibel's Library tagged malcolm_gladwell   View Popular, Search in Google

Oct
4
2010

I like this post by Sam Ladner. I find that the points she makes mesh nicely with the critiques lobbed at The Social Network (the movie), and the inability of Sorkin's take to understand the social transformations that have taken place (and the many more that will take place) via social media platforms.
QUOTE
He [Gladwell] makes the classic mistake of arguing that a particular technology may (or may not) lead to a particular result. In the real, messy, social world, X technology is not guaranteed to lead to Y results. Nor is X technology guaranteed NOT to lead to Y results. Gladwell commits the same sin as those of social media pundits he so blithely condemns. Namely, Gladwell is a technological determinist with a poor grasp of actual social interaction.

Sociologists, by contrast, recognize the social world is complex and full of exceptions. Their contribution to the phenomena of social change is far more nuanced than Gladwell suggets.
UNQUOTE

malcolm_gladwell sam_ladner socialmedia socialjustice socialcritique social_capital facebook

Nov
13
2008

Interview with Malcolm Gladwell about his new book, Outliers. Rather depressing stuff in some ways. I gather that not only do I NOT work hard enough, but I was born at the wrong time of year, not to mention with the wrong background/ role models/ etc. On the other hand, while 10K hours (or 10 years) of practice seem dauting at my age, there must be something in my bag of talents/ tricks that I can leverage. Maybe. But the example of Chris Langan remains depressing, regardless.

globeandmail malcolm_gladwell outliers interview book_review careerism talent

Jan
30
2008

Article by FC's Clive Thompson on the latest work by Duncan Watts, who argues against the idea the trends are created by "influentials" who bring matters to a tipping point.

business duncan_watts economic_anthropology fast_company influentials malcolm_gladwell network_theory tipping_point trendsetting

  • Any attempt to engineer success through Influentials, he argues, is almost certainly doomed to failure.

     

    "It just doesn't work," Watts says, when I meet him at his gray cubicle at Yahoo Research in midtown Manhattan, which is unadorned except for a whiteboard crammed with equations. "A rare bunch of cool people just don't have that power. And when you test the way marketers say the world works, it falls apart. There's no there there."

     

    And this is not, he argues, mere academic whimsy. He has developed a new technique for propagating ads virally, which can double or even quadruple the reach of an ordinary online campaign by harnessing the pass-around power of everyday people--and ignoring Influentials altogether.

  • But a growing group of marketers believes Watts is radically altering the way companies attempt to produce trends.
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