Small Change
Malcolm Gladwell,
New Yorker,
Sept 30, 2010
Malcolm Gladwell talks social revolution as only a popular book-writer can. "What happens next is more of the same. A networked, weak-tie world is good at things like helping Wall Streeters get phones back from teen-age girls. Viva la revolución." Actually, the first 10,000 hours (*) is just what it will take to get good at what you're doing. Then the work to create social change really starts. And this path - unlike your learning - is not nearly so direct nor so certain. And I think that if you're not a part of the current social revolution - and I might add, pretty much every book-writer is not a part of it, they having opted to side with the large publishers - then you don't really get where this is going. I actually enjoyed Anil Dash's response more. "The problem with Gladwell's premise, though, is that it's wildly anachronistic to think that the only way to effect social change is to assemble a sign-wielding mob to inhabit a public space."
Today: 5 Total: 102 [Direct link] [Share]
