Malcolm Gladwell's "A Small Change"

For this post I'll briefly reflect on Malcolm Gladwell's article titled A Small Change (available here).

I found this article extremely persuasive and it rings true with my experience of social networks. The groups I find myself most often invited to on Facebook are trivial causes requiring little to no action on my part. I appreciated the distinction between “strong-tie” and “weak-tie” relationships that Malcolm draws. What could joining a facebook group actually do? It’s so easy to ignore Facebook groups, but it’s much harder to ignore a sit-in.

Movements need muscle; people willing to take action, even if that action is simply casting a particular vote. But social networks don’t provide any muscle, they just provide a forum.

The digital activism associated with President Obama’s election would seem to be a strong counterexample to Gladwell’s claims. The Obama campaign did effect a great change, the election of the first black president as well as a solid victory for a candidate that was relatively unknown prior to the campaign. The campaign involved all sorts of social online mediums. There were facebook groups, youtube video, twitter, online donation possibilities, online Q&A sessions. Isn’t the election of President Obama the shining example of modern day social activism through social networks?

First what the campaign asked of its participants was (comparatively) simple: vote a particular way on the ballot. Voting is a simple, easy, non-dangerous (at least in America) way to potentially cause great change. It just takes a few minutes, is confidential and yet has impact for years. I think Gladwell would argue this voting is (somewhat by design) an unusually effective easy way to effect change.

Secondly the Obama campaign seems to have involved quite a bit of hierarchical organization (a necessary component of successful activism). This hierarchy did not emerge from social networks but was rather imposed upon them (source). The campaign architect explained “We wanted to control all aspects of our campaign. We wanted control of our advertising, and most important, we wanted control of our field operation.” So although the campaign used social networks in its work, it did not grow out of them.

A Few Reason I Think PowerPoint is Awesome

I've always been quite a fan of Powerpoint. Now I'll be quick to point out that I'm not saying I love all the lectures and presentations I've been given with PointPoint. However I think PowerPoint is just wonderful for making diagrams and posters. In the last three days I've used Powerpoint to

• make a sign indicating that a bathroom should not be used
• make a floorplan showing where to position tables for a party
• show the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Raytheon for a class report.

And the remarkable thing is it

was fun making all these diagrams. I was actually looking forward to doing some of this work in Powerpoint. And it was easy!

What I think make PowerPoint such an enjoyable and easy to useprogram to use is its user interface. There's much to say here, but I'll focus on a couple features I particularly like:

Rotation

Whether it's arrows or a table or an image I could not imagine rotating images to be any easier. Clicking on the item displays nodes around it. The nodes can be grabbed to resize, but there is also a green node that rotates the object. It's nearby (Fitt's Law) and if the snap-to-grid setting is enabled (the default) it's easy to get things exactly horizontal or vertical.

Grouping

Combined with copy-paste, the ability to group things together is very useful. It reminds me of object oriented program. I can combine a textbox and shape and make it a "table". Then I can create a new table (copy-paste), or change the size of the table and the textbox will change size automatically. All it takes is selecting multiple elements and then right clicking (again having this option be one of the few in the dropdown menu means it does not take long to get to it -- valuable given that clicking anywhere else would lose the focus on the items to be grouped).

A friend of mine recently purchased an iPad (another friend owns a type writer pictured left). There has been ongoing discussion of the iPad's merits, particularly how it stacks up against a laptop (the friend in question now has a desktop, iPhone, iPad, and no laptop or typewriter). So far he's never wished he had a laptop. I'd like to focus on one big plus of the iPad's design: you can hold it easily in one hand. There are at least two benefits to this feature.

1) Standing up. I find it's terribly awkward to try to use my laptop when I'm standing up. Performing a delicate, dangerous balancing act with my left arm, I gingerly interact with my right (but all the time I wish I could set it down). Not so with the iPad. Just as I might carry a notebook around with me, I can walk around with the iPad.

2) Interaction with others. All sorts of technology allow use to interact with people far from us (which is amazing). But the iPad, much more than a laptop, allows technology to be something you can more easily share with those immediately around you. My friend can hand me the document he's working on. He can say, "hey check out this cool app". No one passes a laptop around a group of friends. But you could pass around your iPad.