Dear Ed,
After your last posting, Gladwell is probably thinking, “With friends like this …” The one bone you throw him is that he might deserve credit for getting us to dredge up all these weighty issues. But you and I are doing all the heavy lifting here, Ed. It’s not as though Gladwell raised these questions and then didn’t answer them adequately. That would be forgivable. He ignores the questions, because they undermine his goal of making readers feel warm and fuzzy and empowered.
Gladwell says he wants to help us “start and control positive epidemics.” His most charming stories are about humble folks who come up with smart, cheap ways to spread beneficial memes. The archetype is the nurse trying to inform black women in San Diego about breast cancer and diabetes. Holding seminars in churches didn’t work, so she tried handing out leaflets in beauty salons; that was the tipping point to success.
But Gladwell’s advice is actually value-free. Anti-smoking advocates can use it, but so can Phillip Morris. (“Hey, let’s hand out free packs of Salem at beauty parlors!”) The fact is, consumers are more likely to be the victims of tipping points than the beneficiaries. In this era of mass media, rich, powerful people striving to be richer and more powerful can shove memes down our throats through brute force. Did George Bush beat John McCain because Bush is really a more attractive candidate, or because he had more support from big business and thus more money for television ads?
As you note, Ed, the tipping effect can forestall genuine competition, so that consumers get stuck with inferior products. The economist Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute has written about this phenomenon; as I recall, The New Yorker even ran an article about Arthur’s work a few years back. The best-known cases include the QWERTY keyboard, which you mention in your last post, and the VHS videotape, which beat out the supposedly superior Betamax. But my favorite example of survival of the unfittest is the victory of the Microsoft operating system over the vastly superior Mac OS.
The Tipping Point itself demonstrates that clever packaging plus forceful marketing can sell a flawed product. Gladwell is a high-profile journalist who writes for a major magazine and whose book is being heavily promoted by a major publisher. And remember, Gladwell pals around with Connector par excellence Jacob Weisberg of Slate! And with Jacob Weisberg’s mom, whose connections dwarf even those of her son! (Disclosure: I am acquainted with Jacob Weisberg, but my career has not benefited from my acquaintance at all.)
Perhaps you’re right, Ed, that I’m demanding too much of Gladwell’s little book. He’s just trying to entertain the masses and make a buck like the rest of us, and God knows there are more egregious examples of scientific hype out there. But one reason I find Tipping Point so disappointing is that I know Gladwell is capable of top-notch, critical science journalism.
In 1995, Richard Preston’s book The Hot Zone–which like The Tipping Point began as a New Yorker article–was whipping up fears that the Ebola virus or other exotic microbes creeping out of the jungle might trigger an apocalyptic plague. In an excellent debunking piece for the New Republic, Gladwell accused Preston of cynically fomenting “hysteria” and “paranoia” in order to sell books. Gladwell pointed out that viruses as virulent as Ebola are subject to a negative feedback effect; victims die so quickly that the virus cannot infect enough people to tip over into a full-blown epidemic. Gladwell accused Preston of “dishonesty” for not pointing out these and other factors that undermined his best-selling message.
Ironic, huh?
