The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point was a fast read, simply because I found the three laws and their examples fascinating. As I read I kept comparing the personnas to people that I knew who fit into the connector, maven, and salesman roles in my life. The pertinent, real-world examples made it easy to see just how often the tree laws are used in our society.

The most amazing find was that 6 degrees of seperation is a real theory, developped by Milgram. I had always known it as the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon, a game we used to play on long car rides. The more I thought about the theory, though, the more it made sense. I feel like college is a perfect example. So many clubs are interconnected and usually the same group of people are involved in multiple campus activities, so it only makes sense that large groups of students are related through the same small number of movers and shakers on campus. People even use this tool to introduce people, "This is Jim, he is neighbors of Sue and Tom's friend, Irene..." People always like to make connections using other people as a point of reference.

I also really enjoyed the description of the maven as being "pathologically helpful." My roommate is addcited to shopping and trends and she cannot wait to tell people who is ahving a sale and what new items just arrived where, it justs makes her day to help other people find these great deals that she gets all the time. There should be more people like that.

The Power of Context used the example of violence on the streets of New York. I have witnessed this first hand after getting into a car accident on a busy street, we thought ten people would have called the police, but not one of them had and we ended up waiting a lot longer than we should have. Another example of this is in lifeguard training they always instructed us to single out one person to call 911 during and emergency, and another to assist you, becuase if you ask the crowd you are more likely to get no response.