Completely extracurricularly (although I am in class right now, I’ve just already finished today’s assignment; the class is called Writing in Digital Environments, I figure this is an acceptable use of time), I’ve been reading about Power laws. This is the idea that 20% of the population holds 80% of the wealth, or that 20% of blogs get 80% of the links.
It was actually the latter idea that made me start thinking about Power laws. Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I got link to begin with. Oh well.
But anyway, in the course of my online perusing, I found a New Yorker article by Malcom Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point and Blink; I haven’t read either) about Power laws and social problems.
An illustration:
Between 1986 and 1990, 21% of LAPD officers were responsible for 100% of the “allegations of excessive force or improper tactics”. Of these, 77% of the officers had only 1 or 2 allegations made against them. So only 3% of LAPD officers were responsible for most of the allegations.
The primary focus of Gladwell’s article is on homelessness, and offers some interesting ideas.
Mostly, I think it’s really interesting that our normal mental model of a bell curve might not be as universally applicable as we often think it is.
And there’s the bell. Time to go take a linguistics test.
In a similiar vein, it has been said that 10% of the fishermen catch 90% of the fish.
Just a little on the “The Tipping Point” for those who have not read it before I get out of here.
The basic idea of the book is that social phenomena progress steadily until they reach “tipping points,” at which time exponential changes occur. The book suggests that, by isolating those tipping points, we can take small actions to effect large changes. In the example of the police officers, we would only have to take action against a very small percentage of officers to address most of the abuse allegations.
Although I have some issues with it, the book is fairly interesting and a relatively quick read.
in order to subvert those in power everyone needs to start clicking the 9th page of results on google as their starting point for search. inefficiency is the only way to salvation,.
if we all underclock our pc’s the software corporations will be forced to write code for slow pc’s thus stopping the technological tumble towards singularity. this will topple google’s empire and YOUR face will be on the cover of time magazine.
the Time is Now, subscribe to Time Magazine, rervert to dialup internet access, write letters to your grandparents, move back in with your parents and teach them how to play the piano (even if you don’t know how to play yourself,) wear the same clothes for a week, play hide and seek in the grocery store, learn to juggle using priceless jewelry passed down from generation to generation, sit and stare at a wall for 30 minutes a day, you are the most powerful being in the universe and you can prove it: you ride a bike to work every day and your beard’s gone grey.