Tuesday, January 02, 2007

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

There's one Malcolm I love most: "Malcolm in the middle". I found another interesting Malcolm theory " The Tipping Point". I heard this author from Mountain View library's2006 winter reader's activity: reading "Blink" by the same author. I didn't get time to read Blink yet. I'm sure that I will try it after I really enjoyed the tipping point.
The theory is very similar to an old Chinese saying:" Gradually quantity change will cause the quality change in a sudden". (量变而质变) All the concepts, products, information, and even population behavior can be spread like virus in exponential increasing speed. The starting point is tiny. After passing certain tipping point, the change could happen dramatically in a sudden. As we heard before, a butterfly flap its wings could cause a hurricane in the Pacific ocean. Furthermore, the change doesn't happen slowly and steadily, like moon's shape. It happens suddenly after passing the tipping point like the eruption of volcanoes. ("一夕之间,风云色变".)
One interesting example from book talks about community: once the percentage of Africa American who moved into certain community reach 20%, most of white American family will move out that community immediately.