Book Review draft 2

What do syphilis in Baltimore, Sesame Street, Hush Puppies shoes, and crime reduction in New York City all have in common? They are all epidemics. They started with a small group of people, reached some ethereal level and exploded across a community, be it local, national, or worldwide. They are also prominently featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell examines epidemics to explore the reasons why these disparate things have been able to affect so many people. He seems personally most interested in those epidemics that can make a positive difference in people's lives, such as the learning epidemics caused by Sesame Street and Blues Clues. Regardless, he traces the elements involved in the spread of many different epidemics–be they fashion statements, non-crime waves or messages such as Paul Revere's famous cry of impending battle.

Central to the book is the idea of a tipping point: An idea, trend, or germ--a contagion--may exist at some basal level within a population, infecting roughly the same number of people that overcome it in any given time period. Some stimulus can cause an imbalance in this equilibrium, though, and the contagion will start to reach more new people than it leaves behind. This is the tipping point, and an epidemic follows. Without that push to disrupt the equilibrium, it may never reach that critical mass, that threshold it needs to cross in order to infect the whole population. Gladwell's analysis of epidemics centers around this idea: How can we identify strategies to "tip" phenomena into epidemics?

Perhaps because of the discussion of this equilibrium, I began to formulate a mathematical model to track the spread of an epidemic to go along with Gladwell's commentary. The model works roughly thus: Each member of the population in question would have a state, either "infected" or "not infected." They would also contact "x" number of people in a given time step "t", and, if infected, have a "y"% chance of "infecting" each of the people they came into contact with. Each individual would remain infected for "z" time steps. Each of these variables would be different for each person in the population (except for the time step, which would necessarily be the same for all), and, when all members of the population were considered, the total spread of the contagion could be tracked. You could predict the percent of a population "infected" with some contagion after a time period by setting an initial condition (maybe only one individual is infected to start with) and extrapolating to the desired number of time steps.

Gladwell defines the transmission of epidemics by three laws. The first of these, "The Law of the Few," explores three special types of people that can help an idea become an epidemic: his “Connectors,” “Salespeople” and "Mavens." These are the people who can tip that contagion over the edge into boundless effect. In my model, these are people who have exceptional coefficients "x", "y", and "z". The first of these, the Connectors, spread contagions exceptionally well simply by the sheer magnitude of people they know. Their "x" is through the roof. If I am studying the spread of the newest pop hit, “Bulletproof” by La Roux, an average person would pass the song along to maybe two people per day. The Connectors would get ten people to listen to it: they know more people, they are in contact with them more, and their contact is meaningful. These people have huge social networks.

What if you don’t like pop? Especially dance pop from the UK, like "Bulletproof"? Gladwell’s Salespeople will convince you that you do. Their "y" is near 100%: they have the ability to transmit ideas to everyone they meet. Gladwell’s Mavens are an interesting case. These people are experts in a narrow field. As a result, they hold a lot of sway when giving advice about that field, and people they "infect" are likely to stick with whatever the Maven is spreading. Given the right contagion--something in their field--they have a high "y," and the "z" of those they infect is likely to rise. Mavens also practice selection among contagions--they will only select the best. The case of the Maven may not apply as well to the spread of a pop hit. Maybe a music reviewer would be a maven, and a favorable review would encourage others to listen.

In this way, these three types of people infect more than their fair share; they diffuse ideas farther than normal people. Whether from sheer numbers as with the Connectors, from careful selection as with the Mavens, or with efficacy of transmission as with the Salespeople, these special individuals have the ability to tip things into epidemics.

Just by looking at my simple model, I disagree that these three types of people would be the only ones who would have the power to transform a contagion into an epidemic–There are other ways to manipulate the "x," "y" and "z" values to produce extraordinary individuals. What about someone with a high "z" who harbors a contagion for a long time–a 'Collector?' These people would be able to upset the equilibrium by transmitting the contagion for a long time–they will be singing “Bulletproof” for weeks rather than just the day or two after they hear it. I also wonder if these Connectors, Salespeople, and Mavens are truly different from the average population, or if there is a broad spectrum of ability. In any case, it is useless to define these people if you can't find them to help tip your epidemic.

The Internet has also caused Gladwell’s heroes, especially the Connectors, to lose some of their power. Social networking sites allow all of us to be Connectors. I can message hundreds of people with the click of a mouse on Facebook, and link them to “Bulletproof” on Youtube. This glut of information devalues the communications of the Connectors. Mavens lose their uniqueness when faced with thousands of their peers reviewing the same items on Amazon. Salespeople are perhaps immune, as good salesmanship requires face-to-face contact.

Additionally, it is short-sighted to say that certain types of people are necessary for an epidemic to transpire. Some exceptional contagions can spread on their own, like H1N1 and results of the presidential race in the USA.

The Few are not even necessary to tip epidemics. The media can take their place. Gladwell even acknowledges that the media can be an alternative vehicle to the “Few” for reaching many people at once. Indeed, as he addresses his second criteria, “The Stickiness Factor,” he talks about children's television as a vehicle for learning epidemics, a case in which messages are disseminated entirely by the media, not by the Few. Gladwell here focuses not on the population through which the epidemic spreads, or the Few who tip it; he looks at the contents of the contagion. The Few can’t do anything with an impotent virus or a worthless idea. It must be "sticky" enough to be absorbed before it can be passed on.

Gladwell highlights Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues as examples of intentionally increasing the 'stickiness' of a message, in this case increasing the stickiness of learning for children. The creators of Sesame Street studied children and what was sticky with them. They then tailored their show to meet those criteria. The sticky factor came not just from the information, but also the way it was presented, catering to children’s short attention spans. Blue’s Clues took the information and success of Sesame Street to another level by further developing the stickiness of the information, repeating it five times every week. This is a very interesting concept, that presentation can change the stickiness of a message without altering the content.

This stickiness factor is not taken into account in my simple model. It is assumed that the contagion will be sticky, that it can be transmitted, and that it will spread. This is the case for most of the things we typically consider contagions, i.e. diseases. With the example of education, Gladwell shows how non-inherently transmissible things can also become contagions. This has huge implications: We can engineer virtually anything to become an epidemic if we can figure out how to make it sticky. We can spread information, ideas and positive change just like H1N1 has spread across the world, if we only figure out how to make our information stickier.

My model is much too simplistic to describe a real-world epidemic, but so is Gladwell's commentary up to this point. He had been hinting at it, like when he described some indefinable quality that some Salespeople posses, but he truly explores the issue in the third section of the book, "The Power of Context." Here he states the very obvious point that circumstances matter. People and ideas do not exist in vacuums. There is more than just stickiness and personality type at play. We as humans have complex subconscious psychological processes that pick up on subtle environmental cues we may not even be aware of. If the song “Bulletproof” is used as a theoretical example in a class project, the context informs the reader that it is not meant as a serious suggestion. The would-be epidemic tipper needs to consider the context that the message will be transmitted in.

Within a population, up until this point, only the transmitters of epidemics (The Connectors, the Mavens, and the Salespeople) have been considered, but the recipient of the transmission is just as important. Communication is a complicated subject that demands a lot from both the sender and the receiver to be effective. The great managerial writer, Drucker, addressed this in a 1974 essay called "Functioning Communications." He delineates there the effort required by the communicator to reach the listener due to differences in mental processes. Communications can fall upon deaf ears when the communicator fails to take into account the listener's mindset. People hear what they want to hear. People's brains are hard-wired to process stimuli in certain fashions. Drucker writes how communication is almost a battle: As the communicator, you have to bring the listener around to your way of thinking. You have to bypass the natural route in the listener's mind and develop new pathways. Otherwise, they will hear what they want to hear, and not what you want them to hear.

Effective communication from the communicator's standpoint demands messages that speak to the audience. Effective communication from the listener's standpoint demands a receptive attitude and a commitment to the consideration of new ideas. This is a hard thing to accomplish when so much of the information processing that goes on in our brains occurs below our consciousness. It's almost like holding you breath: you can only do it for so long before your natural processes take over. For Gladwell, this is addressed as Context. Some messages can be groomed for mass audiences (like Sesame Street), but there will still be barriers to transmission to everybody.

Gladwell devotes considerable space toward discussing nuanced studies of various epidemics, and how his three laws played into them. One example I found particularly interesting told of suicide in the nation of Micronesia: Unheard of before a teenager took his life in the 1960s over a minor disagreement with his parents, a suicide epidemic soon swept the nation. The power of context played a powerful role here: that first suicide gave permission for the rest. Stickiness was important too: suicide, unfortunately, is absolutely sticky, and there is no way to make it less sticky. Try it once, and you are dead. One thing this example lacked, though, was any tie-in to the Few. No Connectors advertised suicide to their many acquaintances, no Mavens told the best methods, and no Salesmen advocated their friends try it. As far as I can tell, the first suicide was reported in the newspapers; the media again was the culprit for tipping this epidemic.

This is indicative of the book as a whole: Gladwell presents a wealth of provocative ideas, a wealth of interesting examples, and a wealth of succinct conclusions. His writing is expertly woven and watertight. His book is chock full of marvelous anecdotes; however, nowhere does he give an example that effectively demonstrates the importance of all of his three laws in causing epidemics to tip. This does not mean his ideas are worthless; rather, he has presented tools that can be used to create change in society, in our thinking patterns, and in the way we spread our messages. If we want to spread things that really matter, such as anti-crime waves and learning, we need to identify ways that will help these things, which are not inherently transmitted, to spread to epidemic proportions.