Pun Salad

I believe I put this book by Malcolm Gladwell in my to-be-read list a long, long time ago. Back during its initial hype-filled publication, circa 2000. After waiting for it to come off the reserve list at the UNH library (it never did, I think), I picked up the 2002 paperback. And it sat on my shelves until now.

And it did not age well.

These days, we would say it's a study of how things "go viral". Or, more soberly, how dramatic cultural changes can happen in a relative eyeblink. Gladwell's first example is how Hush Puppies shoes made a dramatic comeback in the mid-90s after dwindling to their near-demise. And then he moves on to the dramatic decrease in New York City crime, starting in the 90s. And (along the way) there are other examples, described in an attention-grabbing way (Gladwell's a good writer): Sesame Street vs. Blue's Clues; a suicide epidemic in Micronesia; the book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. And many more.

Gladwell attempts to come up with a theoretical framework that would explain all these examples of sudden change. He describes three kinds of people that can set things off, change agents: "Connecters, Mavens, and Salesmen". He looks at the concept of "stickiness"; once people adopt a change (or catch a disease), it has to stick around long enough so that other people can "catch" it. And there's the power of "Context": how receptive the target population and the surrounding environment to the change.

Gladwell's examples, each interesting, seem at times to be round pegs that Gladwell tries very hard to pound into the square holes of his big theory. The predictive value of his insights seems to be negligible; the thing about "viral" outbreaks is that nobody sees them coming. True back when Gladwell wrote, true today.

Which brings me to the point mentioned above: Gladwell wrote at the dawn of the 21st century. And the closest he gets to writing about the Internet is his 2002 Afterword, when he muses on e-mail, and notes that he has a website: (gladwell.com, currently inactive).

In other words: before Facebook (est. 2004), Yelp (est. 2004), YouTube (est. 2005), Twitter (est. 2006), Instagram (est. 2010). I can't help but think that popular social media sites haven't irrevocably changed the landscape Gladwell discusses.