Is the Tipping Point Toast?

I found it very ironic that I happen to select Clive Thompson's article "Is the Tipping Point Toast" this week; ironic because this summer apart from spending my daily commute into New York City sleeping, I had the opportunity to read both Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and his compilation of articles in What the Dog Saw. Even more oddly enough, last night, during our discussion on tie strength and the ideas of betweenness-centrality, density centrality and eigenvector centrality my mind kept jumping back to Gladwell's analysis of mavens, connectors and gatekeepers. I kept having this notion that if these connectors could be found in the flesh, why not in social media as well. Flash-forward to the end of Thompson's article, did I, by his standards, waste my hourly commute this summer, is Gladwell completely full of it? Is the world just too complicated and yet we are attempting to explain and study a natural order that is beyond the grasp of science?

With those pensive notions out of the way, one thing I want to comment on more specifically, which I found to be both very humorous and applicable to our previous class discussions, is how Duncan Watt got his start in the study of trend research. How exactly you might ask? By studying the chirping of the snowy tree cricket, of course. Not only did I find this funny, but I immediately thought of its likeness to Twitter. Change the animal from a cricket to a bird and the chirp to a tweet and what you have is an electronic social media site essentially mirroring the spread of chirping (information) through the cricket network. Not only did I draw on this direct parallel, but I also focused again on this idea that things take place on the internet and in social media as they do in natural life, but differently. Here you have this preliminary viral spread of information through a network, the biggest difference between the two however, stems from the scope at which this information has the ability to spread. Twitter, among other things, offers the unique ability not only for a tweet to spread like a contagion, but to do so on a global scale. However, as the worm on Twitter demonstrated yesterday, the sheer scale and volume of a network has its drawbacks. Information is inherently looking to break free, but if a network is exacerbated to its fullest potential can we stop this information when we want to? This capability seems obvious in the natural world, as the natural world possesses natural limitations; crickets are by no means above these limitations and like it or not they cannot swim so the issue of viral transmission can end at the edge of the ocean, but where is our ocean or fail-safe switch in social media. Can it be argued that there is too much influence and no good way in which to turn it off.

Although I feel like I am bouncing around a lot today in my post, I also wanted to comment on another parallel between gatekeepers, betweenness-centrality and the award winning show Mad Men. Last night when we were discussing connectivity within a network based on nodes and ties and who actually was the most connected, I was especially interested in the comparison between the formal and informal structure of an organization. The notion that true connections within a business are based upon informal ties I find to be reinforced more and more; its not just about who you know, but in what capacity. Although the Vice President of a company has a far superior rank to the President's secretary on a traditional hierarchy, the VP still has to go through someone else to get to the President. This idea, "reach the gatekeepers, and you reach the world", not only thoroughly excites the pitchmen mentioned in Thomson's, but made me immediately think of the show Mad Men on AMC, which apart from being a standout show, really emphasized the power of the informal social network. While Sterling Silver (the marketing madhouse, home to the characters of Mad Men) obviously has the head honchoes, executives and all around important people, as Joan explains to Peggy (a new secretary at the firm), the people you want to be best friends with don't have a corner office, they are the women who operate the switchboard. What good is it if an executive has something important to say, but they don't have a line of communication to say it on? During the period of time in which Mad Men is set, the walled garden of Sterling Silver's organization was made especially high by the fact that the only way to communicate time sensitive or important information, ultimately flowed in and out through a single source, piss-off the switchboard operator and kiss your job goodbye.

While I acknowledge that the channels of information today are far less restricted, I do not feel that we can entirely disregard the importance of certain individuals in a social network. Maybe "influentials don't govern person-to-person communication", but they cannot be disregarded entirely. While we can come up with statistics, evidence and evidence that refutes evidence, what good does it do us? In studying how social ties and strengths are effected and affecting could we in fact be overanalyzing. Are we in fact trying to explain and oversimplify a natural order beyond the realm of exact science, can you really put a statistic on influence. Are we in fact, simply underestimating context and relativity because as Watts says its not "possible to will a trend into existence".

I really enjoyed this article for its relevance and use of current material, much of which I also have read. It allowed me to challenge and question my initial thoughts- there are two sides to every story. (9/10)