About a month ago, (I haven’t been quick in writing this) I watched the movie, The Social Network, and I spent the next two hours utterly consumed by it. I was unable to focus on anything else. I had been shown the creation story of this staple of our present society, a story that was barely in the past, and I couldn’t view the world in the same way again. In history, societies have changed over the course of decades, and more commonly, centuries. Now, society can be changed over the course of months. The way we function as human beings has been altered in just a few short years. How could I not be consumed by that?
Malcolm Gladwell writes about this thing called a tipping point, where a product or idea crosses the line from being a failure and losing money to exponential growth and universal success. The product can go either way before this point; success and failure are both within the realm of possibility, but after it passes that threshold there is no going back. The craziest thing about this point is how much is left up to chance. Just one little change here or there can entirely derail a product or idea: we like to think that success is a byproduct of proper planning and preparation, but often times these things are useless in comparison to the overwhelmingly powerful force of… luck. (more…)
The Llama and the Cow 