THOUGHT CONTROL-- 02-- The TIpping Point

[+] Main ideas of Malcom Gladwells book-- sounds like viruses and memes all over again. Doens't discuss ideas-- or the idea of the idea-- in a Platonic sense. Turns thinking into a "behavior". I think books like this and Frank Luntz's words that work are reductionist, and might work to a degree but they don't attack the essense of the problem which is the higher integrated concept involved in expressing an idea. For an example of that, read EIR by Larouche people-- where the writing is fully integratted and spiked with plenty of references that develop the semantic frame. [+]

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First Lesson of the Tipping Point


Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key areas. Your resources ought to be solely concentrated on the Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.
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[+] Definition of maven

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Diffusion model: a detailed, academic way of looking at how a contagious idea or "product" or innovation moves through a population.

Innovators: the adventurous ones. Visionaries.
Connectors, mavens, and salesmen make it possible for innovations to connect with the early adopters. They are translators: they make ideas and information from a highly specialized world and translate them into a language the rest of us can understand. They drop extraneous details and exaggerate other details so that the message itself acquires a deeper meaning.
Early adopters: the slightly larger group that is infected by the innovators. Visionaries.
Early Majority: the deliberate and the skeptical mass, who would never try anything until the most respected of this group try it first.
Late Majority
Laggards: the most traditional group that see no urgent reason to change.
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Synopsis
Defining that precise moment when a trend becomes a trend, Malcolm Gladwell probes the surface of everyday occurrences to reveal some surprising dynamics behind explosive social changes. He examines the power of word-of-mouth and explores how very small changes can directly affect popularity. Perceptive and imaginative, The Tipping Point is a groundbreaking book destined to overturn conventional thinking in business, sociological, and policy-making arenas.
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MY COMMENT-- This is more behaviorism. It's not leading people to think about ideas-- and the idea of the idea. It might work on some lower level of cognition-- which is fine-- but the key to ethical use of this is to embed in the tactical use the explanation of the tactical use. It's like performing brain surgery with words. You wouldn't perform brain surgery without someone's consent-- and so you wouldn't do semantic framing, and word of mouth transmission leverage to generate a group of 150 without saying so as you're doing it. Even then, I'm not sure it's useful. It may very well be that Macolm Gladwell is attempting to create a tipping point for his book sails by using the tippng point... which would be a self-demonstration. Another would be "spread this idea" written on a piece of paper.

If I were able to generate a societal conversion (fad) to this action, that would demonstrate the emptiness of the process. "spread this idea" means nothing in terms of content, but it would be like the hoola hoop. I just checked and there is no website like spreadthisidea.com... and no website that focuses on that. I bet I could make it happen. It fits all the attributes called for in the tipping point.