Ling Kong
SymSys205 Commentary
The
Tipping Point
In Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” I was most intrigued by his third law of epidemics, The Law of Context, which states that the environment in which a phenomenon occurs is directly related to whether it tips, and small changes in this environment can cause this tipping. The value that I find in this law applies more to the tipping of ideas, products, messages, and behaviors through the use of computers. In using computers to persuade human behavior, it is very hard to see the application of the first law, The Law of the Few. When computers are the main medium to encourage a tipping of a behavior, there are no people involved who can be responsible for the tipping. As for the second law, The Stickiness Factor, stickiness alone will usually not bring a product or behavior to a tipping point. Hence, for the purposes of trying to tip human behavior on a computer, the Law of Context is the only law that really can be applicable and implemented.
Can we really use small subtle changes in computer environments to facilitate change in human behavior? If so, how do we go about doing it? What types of behaviors can we actually tip? In my opinion, each minor change in the environment of a person can reinforce either positively or negatively an attitude or behavior. For example, let’s say that our cell phones changed so that when some of our friends that calls us, our phone will ring a happy little tune; when some others that call us, the phone will ring some annoying tune. This very minor change in our environment—the way our cell phone rings—can have huge effects on how we view and greet our friends. Once we determine for whom the cell phone will ring annoyingly, we may unconsciously hope for the person to stop calling us. After associating the annoying sound with the person, this attitude may carry over to effect how we greet the person on the phone. Minor changes in the negative direction in how we greet the person will discourage the person to call us. Soon enough, we no longer receives phone calls from this friend of ours. On the other hand, a whole difference experience happens with the friend that gets associated with the happy tune. Each time the friend calls, we get reinforced with the happy tune that we like. Soon, we may try to engage in longer conversations and start calling the friend more often so they would call us back, ringing our happy tune over and over again. This perhaps leads to the establishment of a stronger friendship.
This
idea of sounds can be applied to computer environments easily. For example, if
Microsoft wanted to try to tip the behavior of using big words in essays and
documents, they can easily change Microsoft Word so that for each big word that
we type, a positive sounding chime plays on our speakers. Upon hearing such
sounds and associating using big words in documents as being something that’s
beneficial, trends in behavior may develop, eventually reaching a tipping point
in the change of our behavior. Such changes in the computer environment that we
look at daily can be so subtle that they are hardly noticeable in certain
circumstances. However, they can play important roles in changing our behaviors
through a series of reinforcements. Through computers, the Law of Context can tip our behavior, as well as millions of other
computer users’ behavior, causing an epidemic in changes of behavior that is
not bound by traditional means of spreading epidemics. The tipping point, in
this situation, occurs only in the tipping of each individual’s behavior. For
spreading the epidemic to millions of others, there is no tipping point or the
need for a power law, for there is a one to one linear correlation between
computers and humans that computers can persuade. Thus, unforeseen by Gladwell, computers, by utilizing the Law of Context, can offer an alternative method of creating
popularity and spreading epidemics.