The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown, 拢14.99, ISBN
0316648523
WANT to change the world? Find out how in Malcolm Gladwell鈥檚 The Tipping
Point. He has 鈥渢he rules鈥� for engineering social epidemics. You鈥檒l see how
to turn an idea, product or practice into a virulent mind virus that will sweep
through society to become the latest craze, fad or fashion.
A social epidemic begins when a successful idea passes a threshold that
epidemiologists call the tipping point, at which the growth in its sales or
spread ceases to be linear and becomes exponential. Tamagotchis, those demanding
little virtual pets, certainly reached the critical mass needed to tip and go
epidemic, so, arguably, did the vociferous wave of anti-crime sentiment that
recently swept across New York. The crime rate plummeted as a result.
Advertisement
Suicide notoriously tipped in Micronesia during the 1970s. The epidemic among
young men transformed one of the lowest rates of suicide into the world鈥檚
highest. And we have all had firsthand experience of news stories, unknown bands
and ignored clothes designers tipping from the depths of obscurity to become The
Next Big Thing. But how do seemingly unexceptional ideas push past the tipping
point and go epidemic?
The answer, according to Gladwell, is simple. Translating the mathematical
squiggle-babble of sociological epidemic models into clear, well-written
English, and using entertaining examples from his experience as a journalist for
The New Yorker, Gladwell outlines a three-point plan for engineering
your own social epidemic in The Tipping Point.
First, do not waste time marketing your idea to the masses: focus your
energies on the trendsetters, the socially promiscuous and those with the power
to influence. Place your idea or product with these people and, by the force of
word of mouth added to an innate human tendency to keep up with the Joneses,
your epidemic will snowball through society.
Tweaking your idea or product to make it more infectious or 鈥渟ticky鈥�
(Gladwell鈥檚 preference) is the second step. This does not mean major surgery to
transform a mediocre idea into a brilliant idea鈥攁 cosmetic makeover will
work wonders, so just 鈥渢weak and test鈥� with a view to involving your target
audience, telling a story, somehow making it relevant to them.
Finally, get the context right. The human mind is wired to be receptive to
ideas only in certain situations, so make sure your idea fits the context in
which it will be adopted, and make sure it fits the context of a mind still
primarily adapted to a distant hunter-gatherer past.
There you have it, the three rules for a social epidemic: 鈥淭he Law of the
Few鈥�, 鈥淭he Stickiness Factor鈥� and 鈥淭he Power of Context鈥�.
Now, the reason we all suspect that it cannot be this simple, Gladwell
argues, is because we are prisoners of a linear mindset. We expect output to be
linearly proportional to input. For example, imagine a sheet of paper folded in
half, and then in half again, and so on for 50 folds. How tall do you think the
folded stack would be? The thickness of a telephone directory perhaps, or the
height of a refrigerator? No, says Gladwell, the folded stack would reach from
the Earth to the Sun. It is this counter-intuitive power of geometric
progression that allows little things to make big differences鈥攕mall,
well-directed changes can push your idea past the tipping point to create a
full-scale epidemic.
Whether or not The Tipping Point does deliver a workable recipe for
engineering a social epidemic, only time will tell. But while there is nothing
particularly new in the ideas proposed, Gladwell鈥檚 engaging style brings to life
aspects of social contagion research by weaving together some of its more
colourful case studies and insights with his own anecdotes. As such, it is an
excellent source of brain candy.
For example, he describes how cosmetic changes to the context of high crime
in New York, such as removing subway graffiti, precipitated massive drops in
law-breaking, then explains why Big Bird and the muppets are so 鈥渟ticky鈥�, but
not so sticky as an even more repetitive TV programme for children
(Teletubbies?).
Your ideas don鈥檛 even have to be new: sometimes concentrating on the context
is enough. Exploiting existing social networks has made all the difference to
the success of health education campaigns, needle exchange schemes, book sales,
shoes sales and various other phenomena that all went epidemic.
He even finds an elegant way to include the darling experiment of
evolutionary psychology, the Wason test鈥攚hich asks you how many cards you
need to turn over to prove a simple rule鈥攖o show how hopelessly inept we
are at solving problems unless they are put in the context of social situations.
The Tipping Point contains enough to entertain your mind and the minds
with whom you share your dinner for several weeks.
The only element notable by its absence is any reference to 鈥渕emetics鈥�. The
emerging research project, and spawn of Richard Dawkins鈥檚 brain, investigates
the spread, structure and selection of memes 鈥攚hich can loosely be defined
as infectious units of culture.
If there is a real problem with The Tipping Point, it is Gladwell鈥檚
failure to address the political and ethical implications of this new variant of
social engineering. He discusses a process whereby ideas do not survive or
perish based on rational evaluation of their usefulness鈥攔ather, they
prosper by preying on the weaknesses of minds with a herd instinct, more adapted
to the savannah than to supermarkets.
The final chapter, which outlines Gladwell鈥檚 own master plan to engineer a
massive reduction in cigarette smoking, quite frankly scared me with its Brave
New Worldesque cocktail of drug therapy and informational warfare. This is the
social Darwinism of ideas鈥攊deational eugenics. And if it works, it will
provide the doctors of spin and hype with a very dangerous new toy.
But The Tipping Point is not just for those with grand designs for
the planet who have had an ethical bypass operation. I suspect the book will
have a healthy innoculatory effect on everybody else, vaccinating us against the
memetically modified agents of future social epidemics. By showing the strings
by which we are so often moved, Gladwell takes us a step towards our own
liberation.