Leftpedal

Clive Thompson has a long feature in Fast Company about Duncan Watts, a researcher who disputes Malcolm Gladwell’s vaunted “Tipping Point” model of how social ideas spread in society. His experiments and computer models suggest that the spread of ideas is a lot less linear than good ideas in the hands of influential people: Watts wanted to find out whether the success of a hot trend was reproducible. For example, we know that Madonna became a breakout star in 1983. But if you rewound the world back to 1982, would Madonna break out again? [-from Boing Boing]

Interesting stuff.

Link to Boing Boing (thanks Liz!), link to the full Fast Company article.

-db