[WS:] I do not think that the real purpose of his New Yorker piece was debating the networks vs. hierarchies issue. Much of the sociological research he uses is old stuff 1980s or even earlier - which does not make it obsolete, of course, au contraire, but the stuff is pretty well known, at least to sociologists.
His point, as I see it, to take a stab at the social media fetish that seems to be spreading like brush fire. It is the new "new economy" hoopla - "cool" computer related/generated products are going to save our world and solve all our problems. Heaven is just one click of a mouse away.
This stuff deserves to be given an enema and then buried in a match box. Gladwell's piece does that rather well.
Wojtek
On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 10:25 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> Just read "Outliers" and was disappointed.
>
> Gladwell writes well, and the article you referenced is definitely one of his better efforts, but it still feels like he's stopping short of finishing the work. Is social networking vs hierarchical organization necessarily an either/or thing? And if someone is touting social networking as "revolutionary" what does that actually tells us about them? And are there not certain problems with hierarchical organization -- as in, once you get the leaders, everything is toast.
>
> The free speech movement managed to achieve its aims while rejecting this hierarchy, though admittedly the goals were far more delimited than fighting racism, and certainly Savio got radicalized in Mississippi.
>
> ...anyway. I'd say this is partly the New Yorker cocktail party chatter format, but Outliers was a book, and he could have raised the level above chatter, and he really ultimately doesn't go beyond saying something lightly dangerous.
>
> Joanna
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael Pollak" <mpollak at panix.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Saturday, October 2, 2010 6:06:44 PM
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Gladwell: The Difference Between Movements and Networks
>
>
> For those who have only read his silly stuff and never his good essays,
> here's a good one:
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell
>
> Michael
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