The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference / Malcolm Gladwell, read by the author, 301 p.

An analysis of the factors that allow a behavior, a fashion, or an illness to 'go viral' and grow exponentially.  The keys, according to Gladwell, are the presence of important people called connectors, the 'stickiness' of the ideas involved, and the context in which the idea is placed.  Examples explored include a recent syphilis outbreak, Hush Puppies shoes, teen smoking, and more.

Interesting and well-developed thoughts, but in this era of social media, memes, and disinformation, fundamentally out-of-date.

Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking) / Christian Rudder 300 p.

Thought Gone Girl was a page-turner?  Try Dataclysm!  Truly, I couldn't turn pages fast enough.   Rudder is a mathematician and a co-founder of  dating site OKCupid, and he has a spin on our data that I hadn't heard before: while we're losing privacy every time we click, we're also assembling the first-ever social history that isn't the story of  kings and presidents.  Our Facebook habits, our Tweets, our dating matches are the most democratic means possible to glean what all of us really feel about race, gender, and politics.  Because our online habits are more truthful than what we say about ourselves on surveys (or to our friends, co-workers, and even family members), and because the sheer volume of data is so massive, we can draw conclusions about ourselves at moments in time that are sort of, well, accurate.

To prove his point, Rudder starts with the obvious: a woman's sexual attractiveness to men begins to decline after her 21st birthday (tell us something we don't know, right ladies?).  But by slicing data from OKCupid, Reddit, Craigslist and Google, among others, he shows us who we are in ways that astonish.  Read Dataclysm: Rudder would tell you that we're all the authors of this story.