My intern just got back from attending Lunch 2.0, chatting with web industry folks. Last night, I went to Triple Rock brewery for a little Geoworks reunion, finding out what my ex-coworkers are up to these days. This is not goofing off. This is "networking." They can both involve greasy food, but "networking" can also spread around ideas and knowledge and stuff. See, that's the difference between just going to a bar and going to a bar to spread memes: one is at a tippling point; the other passes the tipping point. Sorry. I am waiting for a long computer batch job to finish. I have nothing better to do with my time than to patch together a contrived segue for talking about The Tipping Point.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote this book about how ideas spread. He claims that three types of people spread memes: socially connected people; informative people; persuasive people. He writes about coolhunters. He talks about trends. I didn't get much out of this book, probably because I'd already heard its ideas relayed elsewhere. But it was the only thing in the Orange County airport bookstore that I thought I could stand to read.
Labels: book, echo chamber, jargon