Evolution is Everywhere

Evolution is one of my great interests. I've noticed lately how evolution is implied in so much, and well beyond biology. It is found in social environments, and in business. It is possibly everywhere. Today's link shows how the same ecological process, operating in opposite directions, can be found in fiction and in non-fiction.

I'm currently reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired. The title refers to the huge number of products that sell rarely if at all. However, the internet economy has now made these items viable products. The business opportunities represented by these goods are collectively comparable to the few 'hits' at the 'head' of the distribution. (See the figure, below, from www.thelongtail.com, Anderson's website.) At one point in the book, Anderson describes these goods in ecological terms. It's as if the top-selling products were always there as islands that show above the water line. Now the ocean is receding, and revealing all those other items that are now available. I read this as saying that many niches are now viable business opportunities.

What about the opposite situation? In the novel Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut describes what happens when a group of tourists are stranded on an island while the rest of the human race contracts a mysterious disease that prevents them from reproducing. In technical terms, the genetic pool is dramatically bottlenecked. Vonnegut mashes up time and space and life and death and ghosts in his usual hilarious format, and describes how an accident saves the human race, but leads to an unusual evolutionary twist.

Reflexive explanation

In the book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes three types of people, all of whom can combine to make great things happen, that is, to help ideas/items/fads/fashions/etc. reach their own tipping point and become an epidemic. The three kinds of people are mavens, connectors and salesmen.

Mavens know everything: where to get the best of everything, where to get the best price, how to game the market. They are the connoisseurs, helpers and educators. Salesmen, of course, infect their co-converationalists with whatever they're interested in, be it a mood or an item or an idea.

And finally, there are Connectors. These are the folks who know everyone. If you were to look at a social networking website (facebook, linkedin) you would find some people to be 'nodes' on the social network; these are the connectors. The important point about connectors, though, is that they have mastered the 'weak link'. They aren't best friends with everyone in their network; there isn't enough time in the day for that. But they maintain a casual, friendly connection to each person in their network. On top of all of this, connectors know people who move in different circles. One connector that Gladwell describes knew people in 8 or 10 different circles: politicians, actors, writers, doctors and so on.

Gladwell described a classic study 'Getting A Job' by sociologist Mark Granovetter. Of professionals who had discussed a job hunt with people they knew, and for whom those contacts had helped them to get a job, 56% were 'weak ties' as compared with 17% that were closer friends. This is the point: the important connections are the weak ties.

And this is also the point of this website. I am proposing that the weak ties are the ones that will help you to find new and interesting works that you might not have found otherwise. If you were to go to the bookstore, The Black Swan and The Long Tail are displayed next to one another, but The Black Swan and What Are You Optimistic About? probably never would be. They are in different circles. The proposition of this website is to show how these circles overlap in unexpected and surprising and interesting ways.

I hope you'll enjoy it, and I hope even more that you'll contribute.