Interesting to note that this is being raised in an economics publication...with a comedic twist at the end!
Reposted in full from The Economist, 6 February 2010
Can there be too many Australians?
'As he prepares to call an election later this year Kevin Rudd, Australia's prime minister, is hoping his government's handling of the global financial crisis might help him win a second term. Australia was one of the few rich countries to avoid a recession. Unemployment in December fell to 5.5%. But a report published on February 1st announces an even bigger challenge for the economy: a population explosion.
The report, from the federal Treasury, foresees Australia's population growing by almost two-thirds over the next 40 years—to 36m—about 25% higher than the Treasury had predicted just three years ago. Some of the boom will be home-grown, as young Australian women are having more children than did their baby-boomer predecessors. But a larger proportion will come from immigration. Up to last year, Australia had been taking about 244,000 immigrants a year.
The big intake will at least help to compensate for an ageing population. Almost 90% of today's immigrants are younger than 40, compared with only 55% of native Australians. Nonetheless the number of Australians aged between 65 and 84 will more than double by 2050, and the number of those aged over 85 will more than quadruple. So many oldies will mean almost half of government spending going to health care and support for the elderly. Yet the proportion of working-age taxpayers will be only about half as big as now.
Mr Rudd has said he believes in "a big Australia". More people, he argues, will contribute to the country's prosperity and boost its influence in Asia. But since these latest demographic projections, he has been touring Australia's big cities warning that the country must lift productivity, or risk unsustainable budget deficits later on.
Some experts argue that the environmental costs of a big Australia are an even bigger worry than the fiscal ones. A decade of drought has left the country's water supplies depleted. Until recent rains, the Lachlan river had stopped flowing in some of the farming regions of New South Wales, the most populous state. The Treasury's report says climate change poses as serious a threat to Australia as does the ageing of its population. This week Mr Rudd's government brought back to Parliament a bill to create an emissions-trading scheme, though the upper house rejected it twice last year. He seems determined to force a showdown over the issue.
Ken Henry, the head of the Treasury, questions the capacity of a country as hot and dry as Australia to sustain so many people. He is also pessimistic about the prospects for biodiversity. He recently cited the granting of permits over the past decade that have allowed the commercial slaughter of 50m kangaroos "primarily to give household pets a bit of variety in their diet". This suggests, he said, that even with only 22m people, "we haven't managed to find accommodation with our environment."
The Treasury report does not include a kangaroo-population forecast.'
07 February 2010
Creative Litter Campaign
Clever approach documented in Bliss Blog, 18 September 2008
'Everyday the rubbish found around the bus shelters was picked up and placed inside the bus shelter. This should increase the awareness for the waste disposal.'
[click to enlarge]
'Everyday the rubbish found around the bus shelters was picked up and placed inside the bus shelter. This should increase the awareness for the waste disposal.'
[click to enlarge]
Slow Down Week 8 - 12 February
Adbusters have designated 8-12 February 2010 as 'Slow Down Week'...are they kidding? Have they seen my diary this week?!
But a damn fine plan nonetheless!
'Slow isn’t necessarily a pace, it’s a philosophy – a way of approaching life. We can slow down simply by addressing the disconnect that makes life feel anxious, alienating and fast. Try simple things like shopping at a local farmers’ market rather than a big box store. Knowing the provenance and history of your food will change the way you experience eating. Instead of hopping in your car and heading to Starbucks, walk to an indie coffee shop. Chat with the owners, smile at a stranger and sip your latte from a mug rather than dashing off with a cardboard cup. Explore what your neighborhood has to offer and experience the simple, provincial pleasure of purchasing cheese from one store, bread from another. To slow down, we don’t have to stop moving – we just have to move in different, more meaningful ways.'
But a damn fine plan nonetheless!
'Slow isn’t necessarily a pace, it’s a philosophy – a way of approaching life. We can slow down simply by addressing the disconnect that makes life feel anxious, alienating and fast. Try simple things like shopping at a local farmers’ market rather than a big box store. Knowing the provenance and history of your food will change the way you experience eating. Instead of hopping in your car and heading to Starbucks, walk to an indie coffee shop. Chat with the owners, smile at a stranger and sip your latte from a mug rather than dashing off with a cardboard cup. Explore what your neighborhood has to offer and experience the simple, provincial pleasure of purchasing cheese from one store, bread from another. To slow down, we don’t have to stop moving – we just have to move in different, more meaningful ways.'
03 February 2010
The Plot To Stop Airport Expansion
Reposted in full from Greenpeace UK
'We've bought a piece of land slap bang in the middle of the proposed third runway site at Heathrow. We're not going to let the runway get built and we need your help.
The government plans to go ahead with airport expansion across the country even though this means we'll have no hope of meeting our climate emission targets. At full capacity, Heathrow would become the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the whole country. We can't let this happen if we are serious about tackling climate change.
We've bought the plot at Heathrow to make sure that climate change cannot be ignored. We will challenge the proposals every step of the way. We will give evidence at the planning inquiry, resist the compulsory purchase of the land, we will campaign during the national election and final, if necessary, we will stand with the community of Sipson and stop the bulldozers.
The village of Sipson, including 700 homes, businesses, the local school and several local pubs, will be flattened to make way for the third runway.
We have four legal owners on the deeds: Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan and prospective Tory parliamentary candidate Zac Goldsmith and Greenpeace UK. That's the maximum number of owners we can put on the deeds, but we're inviting everyone to join the plot as a beneficial owner and stand beside us to resist all attempts to build the runway.
You'll be joining others who've already signed-up to be beneficial owners, including local Labour MP John McDonnell, Tory frontbench spokeswoman Justine Greening, Lib Dem MP Susan Kramer, environmentalist George Monbiot and acclaimed climate scientist and Royal Society Research Fellow Dr Simon Lewis.
We'll be depending on thousands of people to join the Airplot community in the coming months and years to put pressure on your MPs, write letters to local media, join us at events, tell friends, and come up with your own ideas to make sure that everyone in the country know that we must stop airport expansion if we are going to stop runaway climate change.
The government says that we need the third runway to create jobs in these tough economic times. But building a runway in 10 years time will do nothing to stop a recession now. And the benefits to the economy have been completely overblown by the government. In fact an independent study commissioned by WWF suggests that the true cost of a third runway would lead to a £5 billion loss.
In truth the government has few allies outside the aviation industry on this issue. Scientists including the government's former Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King, the head of the environment agency, Chris Smith, cabinet ministers Ed Miliband and Hillary Benn, all major opposition parties, and an increasing number of Labour MPs have all spoken out against the plans to build a third runway at Heathrow.'
'We've bought a piece of land slap bang in the middle of the proposed third runway site at Heathrow. We're not going to let the runway get built and we need your help.
The government plans to go ahead with airport expansion across the country even though this means we'll have no hope of meeting our climate emission targets. At full capacity, Heathrow would become the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the whole country. We can't let this happen if we are serious about tackling climate change.
We've bought the plot at Heathrow to make sure that climate change cannot be ignored. We will challenge the proposals every step of the way. We will give evidence at the planning inquiry, resist the compulsory purchase of the land, we will campaign during the national election and final, if necessary, we will stand with the community of Sipson and stop the bulldozers.
The village of Sipson, including 700 homes, businesses, the local school and several local pubs, will be flattened to make way for the third runway.
We have four legal owners on the deeds: Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan and prospective Tory parliamentary candidate Zac Goldsmith and Greenpeace UK. That's the maximum number of owners we can put on the deeds, but we're inviting everyone to join the plot as a beneficial owner and stand beside us to resist all attempts to build the runway.
You'll be joining others who've already signed-up to be beneficial owners, including local Labour MP John McDonnell, Tory frontbench spokeswoman Justine Greening, Lib Dem MP Susan Kramer, environmentalist George Monbiot and acclaimed climate scientist and Royal Society Research Fellow Dr Simon Lewis.
We'll be depending on thousands of people to join the Airplot community in the coming months and years to put pressure on your MPs, write letters to local media, join us at events, tell friends, and come up with your own ideas to make sure that everyone in the country know that we must stop airport expansion if we are going to stop runaway climate change.
The government says that we need the third runway to create jobs in these tough economic times. But building a runway in 10 years time will do nothing to stop a recession now. And the benefits to the economy have been completely overblown by the government. In fact an independent study commissioned by WWF suggests that the true cost of a third runway would lead to a £5 billion loss.
In truth the government has few allies outside the aviation industry on this issue. Scientists including the government's former Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King, the head of the environment agency, Chris Smith, cabinet ministers Ed Miliband and Hillary Benn, all major opposition parties, and an increasing number of Labour MPs have all spoken out against the plans to build a third runway at Heathrow.'
Poor Neighbourhoods Can Kill
How poverty and social disadvantage and associated stress affects health and well-being...
Excerpt from the New Scientist, 13 January 2010
'...Across the US, death rates among black women diagnosed with breast cancer are 37 per cent higher than for whites, but in Chicago the difference is an astonishing 68 per cent (Cancer Causes & Control, vol 18, p 323). Something about this heaving metropolis is sending black women to an early grave.
Poor access to screening and therapy is clearly an important factor. But according to a novel collaboration between sociologists and biologists, the strain of living in some of the toughest neighbourhoods in the US may cause biological changes that lead directly to earlier deaths.
Results from the collaboration indicate that social isolation and a fear of crime cause an overload of stress hormones that can change cell biology, sending tumours into overdrive. "We're showing that your social environment can affect your health directly," says Suzanne Conzen of the University of Chicago. "It goes into gene expression. That concept is really new."
Crucially, this insidious influence is felt most by Chicago's African American women, who are far more likely to live in the city's deprived areas than their white counterparts.
The provocative hypothesis highlights the need for new ways of fighting breast cancer in black women in Chicago specifically, including via social interventions. More broadly, other health researchers are hailing the union of biology and sociology as a model for future studies into a whole range of health disparities. "It's a great example of the kind of direction in which I can see us heading," says Tim Rebbeck, an epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. There are already hints that stress and social deprivation could have similar effects on diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
To get a handle on how tough life in Chicago can get, a good place to start is the neighbourhood of Englewood in the city's South Side. Poverty in Englewood is grinding, crime is endemic and amenities that the mostly white residents of comfortable suburbs like Clearing take for granted are long gone. "Even churches have moved out," says Sarah Gehlert of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, lead sociologist on the project.
New Scientist got a taste of conditions on a tour of the South Side with members of Gehlert's research team. At vacant lots strewn with beer bottles and other debris, I'm told to watch my step. A previous visitor stumbled on a bag of urine and other medical waste. Along one Englewood street, we pass three burnt-out houses. On this winter morning, the gang activity that blights the area has yet to ramp up for the day. But the grilles on the windows of the Simon Guggenheim Elementary School are a testament to the crime that stalks these streets. You wouldn't want to be here after dark, says Charles Mininger, a graduate student on the project...'
Excerpt from the New Scientist, 13 January 2010
'...Across the US, death rates among black women diagnosed with breast cancer are 37 per cent higher than for whites, but in Chicago the difference is an astonishing 68 per cent (Cancer Causes & Control, vol 18, p 323). Something about this heaving metropolis is sending black women to an early grave.
Poor access to screening and therapy is clearly an important factor. But according to a novel collaboration between sociologists and biologists, the strain of living in some of the toughest neighbourhoods in the US may cause biological changes that lead directly to earlier deaths.
Results from the collaboration indicate that social isolation and a fear of crime cause an overload of stress hormones that can change cell biology, sending tumours into overdrive. "We're showing that your social environment can affect your health directly," says Suzanne Conzen of the University of Chicago. "It goes into gene expression. That concept is really new."
Crucially, this insidious influence is felt most by Chicago's African American women, who are far more likely to live in the city's deprived areas than their white counterparts.
The provocative hypothesis highlights the need for new ways of fighting breast cancer in black women in Chicago specifically, including via social interventions. More broadly, other health researchers are hailing the union of biology and sociology as a model for future studies into a whole range of health disparities. "It's a great example of the kind of direction in which I can see us heading," says Tim Rebbeck, an epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. There are already hints that stress and social deprivation could have similar effects on diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
To get a handle on how tough life in Chicago can get, a good place to start is the neighbourhood of Englewood in the city's South Side. Poverty in Englewood is grinding, crime is endemic and amenities that the mostly white residents of comfortable suburbs like Clearing take for granted are long gone. "Even churches have moved out," says Sarah Gehlert of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, lead sociologist on the project.
New Scientist got a taste of conditions on a tour of the South Side with members of Gehlert's research team. At vacant lots strewn with beer bottles and other debris, I'm told to watch my step. A previous visitor stumbled on a bag of urine and other medical waste. Along one Englewood street, we pass three burnt-out houses. On this winter morning, the gang activity that blights the area has yet to ramp up for the day. But the grilles on the windows of the Simon Guggenheim Elementary School are a testament to the crime that stalks these streets. You wouldn't want to be here after dark, says Charles Mininger, a graduate student on the project...'
Lab Experiment - Atomic Dogs
Change agents need to be students of what causes people to forward articles, videos and ideas that 'go viral' - but what makes this? The New Scientist created its own experiment...the video itself is not the most riveting, and how one could measure an increase in scientific understanding after watching it I don't know...but who could resist golden retrievers?!
Excerpt from The New Scientist, 28 December 2009
'It is a cold November evening and I am perched atop a tall stepladder in a village hall outside London. On the floor, 16 golden retrievers stare up at me bemused. They are arranged in a square, four by four. I watch through the viewfinder of my video camera. This, I think to myself, could make me famous.
It all came about at the behest of my editor. We want you to write about viral videos, he had told me a couple of weeks earlier. Go and find out why some videos go viral. What makes people share them? It sounded straightforward enough. He sent me a link to Charlie Bit My Finger, a video of a baby biting a toddler. It is currently YouTube's most watched video of all time.
"I want you to make your own viral and become internet famous," he said.
"If this can get 135 million hits, you can do it too." Without wanting to spoil the ending, I can reveal that Charlie's record remains intact. Still, despite my worst fears, my video turned out to be a surprising success.
Watch the average homemade viral video of, say, a skateboarding dog, and you could be forgiven for thinking that going viral is easy. In fact, the odds are stacked against you. Approximately 1 million new videos are uploaded to the web daily, according to some estimates. Up to half of those are on YouTube, which claims 20 hours of footage are posted every minute.
The vast majority bomb. Less than 10 per cent of YouTube videos show any sign of viral behaviour, according to Riley Crane of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who studied around 5 million of them. In most cases, the only hits they receive are those you would expect from family and friends plus a handful of people stumbling across them at random, he says.
To better understand what makes people share videos, I turned to Judith Donath of MIT, who studies online social networks. She argues that the factors driving people to share stuff over the web are not that different from the reasons apes pick bugs out of each other's fur: it's a way of establishing social bonds. Other researchers have argued that in human societies, language - especially gossip - has taken on the social function of such grooming. Sharing videos via email or within social networks is just the next step, Donath argues. "Sharing online is equivalent to small talk," she says. "It's a little gift of information. It shows 'I'm thinking of you'."
Video sharing is also a way of making a statement. "People use videos as a way of showing their position in the 'information ecology'," she says. "A video reflects on the person who sends it." In other words, people will pass on a video if they think it's cool - because it makes them look cool too...
Eventually, we hit upon a winning idea. I called it Pets Teach Science. The aim, as stated on our web page (youtube.com/user/PetsTeachScience), is "to demonstrate tricky scientific concepts ranging from quantum physics to chemical structure with the help of man's best friend and other furry companions". It was fun and had the potential to be copied by others to become an "internet meme".
The next question was what to film for the first episode. According to Bernardo Hubermann of HP Laboratories in Palo Alto, California, aspiring viral makers should throw everything they have into their initial effort. When he and his colleague Fang Wu analysed the performance of 10 million videos, they found that the probability of a video succeeding plummets if it is a user's second or third effort - even though the quality of the later videos is generally higher. "If you don't make it in your first submission, you probably won't make it," says Hubermann.
For what I had in mind, a degree of canine discipline was required, so I contacted a group of dog trainers called the Southern Golden Retriever Society Display Team based in Kent, UK. They agreed to help, and last month we made a film using 16 of their dogs to illustrate the structure of the atom. Some of the animals acted as the protons and neutrons in the nucleus, while the rest circulated to mimic the electron cloud...
A few days of shamelessly begging all my friends and family to disseminate the video garnered fewer than 1000 hits...
The big breakthrough came after a tip from Michael Wesch, an anthropologist at Kansas State University in Manhattan who studies the behaviour of visitors to YouTube. He does so using the methods his peers apply to studying remote tribes - by participating. His own videos have attracted more than 10 million views.
One of the key bits of advice he gave me was to send the video to a so-called "sneezer" - a media outlet or blogger that can quickly disseminate your video to a large number of people. "Almost every viral has a catalyst moment at which it has a big leap of, say, 100,000 viewers at once," he says. For the massive videos, that sneeze can be anything from a TV appearance to a tweet by a popular Twitterer, such as movie actor Ashton Kutcher to his several million followers. This catapults the video onto YouTube's daily "most popular" lists, and the chain reaction begins. Even if only 1 in 10 people continue to share the video, you have succeeded.
The sneezer hypothesis is backed up by Crane's statistical analysis. Though around a third of viral videos appear to spread gradually by word of mouth alone, the rest receive some kind of external plug that boosts their popularity.
My own sneeze came after I sent a link to the free London newspaper Metro. The paper gave Pets Teach Science an enthusiastic write-up, and the video's views surged by about 8000 within a few hours. It soon appeared on YouTube's "pets and animals" page. In the following days, The Huffington Post picked it up, providing another surge, and a link from the über-blog Boing Boing almost doubled my hits overnight to more than 50,000.
As this article went to press, the video had been viewed more than 110,000 times, proving that with a little cunning, and some cute pets, anyone can make a video go viral...'How to Start a Revolution
Excerpt from The Tipping Point - The Net Version, a paraphrasing of the main ideas in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point by Robert Paterson
'The Tipping Point is: That one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once. The moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point, a place where the unexpected becomes expected, where radical change is more than possibility. It is a certainty.
Epidemics tip because of the extraordinary efforts of a few select carriers. But they also sometimes tip when something happens to transform the epidemic agent itself.
Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.
Are another example of geometric progression: when a virus spreads through a population, it doubles and doubles again into infinity.
Epidemics are a function of the people who transmit infectious agents, the infectious agent itself, and the environment in which the infectious agent is operating:
...In order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first. Contagiousness is in larger part a function of the messenger. Stickiness is primarily a property of the message.
The Law of the Few
There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them. With an epidemic, a tiny majority of the people do the work. Once critical factor in epidemics is the nature of the messenger. Messengers make something spread.
Word of mouth is still the most important form of human communication. Rumors are the most contagious of all social messages.
Connectors
Mavens
Salespeople
The Stickiness Factor
There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible/sticky and compels a person into action. All you have to do is find it. In order to be capable of sparking epidemics, ideas have to be memorable and move us into action. Content of the message matters too.
The Power of Context
We don't necessarily appreciate that our inner states are the result of our outer circumstances. We are more than just sensitive to changes in context. We're exquisitely sensitive to them. And the kinds of contextual changes that are capable of tipping an epidemic are very different than we might ordinarily suspect. The impetus to engage in a certain kind of behavior is not coming from a certain kind of person but from a feature of the environment.
Conclusion
First Lesson of the Tipping Point
Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key areas. Your resources ought to be solely concentrated on the Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.
Second Lesson of the Tipping Point
The world does not accord with our intuition. Those who are successful at creating social epidemics do not just do what they think is right. They deliberately test their intuitions.
Important Conclusion
What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus. Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action. Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push; just in the right place; it can be tipped.
Notes
Diffusion model: a detailed, academic way of looking at how a contagious idea or "product" or innovation moves through a population.
'The Tipping Point is: That one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once. The moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point, a place where the unexpected becomes expected, where radical change is more than possibility. It is a certainty.
Epidemics tip because of the extraordinary efforts of a few select carriers. But they also sometimes tip when something happens to transform the epidemic agent itself.
Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.
Are another example of geometric progression: when a virus spreads through a population, it doubles and doubles again into infinity.
Epidemics are a function of the people who transmit infectious agents, the infectious agent itself, and the environment in which the infectious agent is operating:
- they (Epidemics) have clear examples of contagious behavior
- they both have little changes that make big effect
- it takes only the smallest of changes to shatter an epidemic's equilibrium
- they happen in a hurry
...In order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first. Contagiousness is in larger part a function of the messenger. Stickiness is primarily a property of the message.
The Law of the Few
There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them. With an epidemic, a tiny majority of the people do the work. Once critical factor in epidemics is the nature of the messenger. Messengers make something spread.
Word of mouth is still the most important form of human communication. Rumors are the most contagious of all social messages.
Connectors
- people with a special gift for bringing the world together, people specialists
- know lots of people
- have an extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances, making social connections
- have mastered the "weak tie"; a friendly, yet casual social connection
- manage to occupy many different worlds and subcultures and niches
- by having a foot in so many different worlds, they have the effect of bringing them all together
- acquaintances represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are
- social glue: they spread the message
Mavens
- information specialists
- once they figure out how to get that great deal, they want to tell you about it too.
- solves his/her own problems, his/her own emotional needs, by solving other people's problems; have knowledge and the social skills to start word-of-mouth epidemics.
- a teacher and a student
- in a social epidemic, Mavens are data banks; they provide the message.
Salespeople
- have the skills to persuade when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing
- little things can make as much of a difference as big things
- gives nonverbal clues that are more important than verbal clues...
The Stickiness Factor
There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible/sticky and compels a person into action. All you have to do is find it. In order to be capable of sparking epidemics, ideas have to be memorable and move us into action. Content of the message matters too.
- what is needed is a subtle but significant change in presentation to make most messages stick
- the elements that make an idea sticky turn out to be small and trivial
- 'clutter' has made it harder and harder to get any one message to stick
- the information age has created a stickiness problem
- pay careful attention to the structure and format of your material, and you can dramatically enhance stickiness
- can tip a message by tinkering, on the margin, with the presentation of their ideas
The Power of Context
We don't necessarily appreciate that our inner states are the result of our outer circumstances. We are more than just sensitive to changes in context. We're exquisitely sensitive to them. And the kinds of contextual changes that are capable of tipping an epidemic are very different than we might ordinarily suspect. The impetus to engage in a certain kind of behavior is not coming from a certain kind of person but from a feature of the environment.
- small changes in context can be just as important in tipping epidemics...
- what really matters is little things - 'Broken Windows Theory': in a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive panhandling, are all the equivalent of broken windows, invitations to more serious crimes (Rudy Gulliani's belief)
- an epidemic can be reversed/tipped by tinkering with the smallest details of the immediate environment
- there are specific situations so powerful that they can overwhelm our inherent predispositions
- human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of the situation and context. We are a lot more attuned to personal cues than contextual cues
- character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstances and context
- the convictions of your heart and the actual contents of your thoughts are less important, in the end, in guiding your actions then the immediate context of your behavior...
Conclusion
First Lesson of the Tipping Point
Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key areas. Your resources ought to be solely concentrated on the Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.
Second Lesson of the Tipping Point
The world does not accord with our intuition. Those who are successful at creating social epidemics do not just do what they think is right. They deliberately test their intuitions.
Important Conclusion
What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus. Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action. Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push; just in the right place; it can be tipped.
Notes
Diffusion model: a detailed, academic way of looking at how a contagious idea or "product" or innovation moves through a population.
- Innovators: the adventurous ones, visionaries
- Connectors, mavens, and salesmen make it possible for innovations to connect with the early adopters. They are translators: they make ideas and information from a highly specialized world and translate them into a language the rest of us can understand. They drop extraneous details and exaggerate other details so that the message itself acquires a deeper meaning'
- Early adopters: the slightly larger group that is infected by the innovators. Visionaries.
- Early Majority: the deliberate and the skeptical mass, who would never try anything until the most respected of this group try it first'
- Late Majority Laggards: the most traditional group that see no urgent reason to change'
This Is Indexed
Jessica Hagy has been blogging these sorts of diagrams for a while, now has turned them into a book! Here are a few that relate to sustainability:
http://thisisindexed.com
http://thisisindexed.com
Australian Centre for Social Innovation - Adelaide
Reposted in full from the Adelaide Review, 28 January 2010
'The Australian Centre for Social Innovation is the latest in a series of institutions that aim to provide both the city of Adelaide and the state of South Australia with guidance in creatively addressing a raft of current and potential social problems. The Adelaide Review spoke with newly appointed CEO Brenton Caffin.
With strong support from the Premier and South Australian government, the idea for the development of an Australian Centre for Social Innovation, headquartered in Adelaide, came from a key recommendation from former Thinker in Residence, Geoff Mulgan. Mulgan argued for the role of such institutions in developing methods for social innovation and better matching the supply of good ideas to the demand of current and future social problems, of which there are no shortage.
Following Mulgan’s recommendation, the State Government agreed to provide seed funding to establish the Centre and recruited a national Board, chaired by Phillip Adams, to oversee the Centre’s development. New CEO Brenton Caffin joined the Centre in October last year and has since been working with the Board on both the business plan and program of work for 2010.
Social innovation, lest it be thought a rather woolly term, could be best described as “a novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals”. Geoff Mulgan has succinctly described social innovation as “new ways to address unmet social needs”.
South Australia has a strong tradition of social innovation, from the early development of the Torrens title, legislation to enable women to run for parliament, the establishment of the South Australian Housing Trust back in the 1930s, environmental legislation such as the container deposit and more recently the plastic bag ban and alternative accommodation initiatives such as Common Ground. Meanwhile, global examples range from the Grameen Bank’s development of micro-finance in Bangladesh through to new ways of online collaboration such as WikiPedia.
A social innovation can be a product, production process, or technology (much like innovation in general), but it can also be a principle, an idea, a piece of legislation, a social movement, an intervention, or some combination of them.
“Social innovation can take place within government, within traditional companies, or within the non-profit or third sector, but is increasingly seen to happen most effectively in the space between the three sectors,” comments Caffin.
“We will definitely be drawing lessons from a range of models, while putting our own flavour on what we do here. The Young Foundation (where Mulgan is Director), which builds on the 50 year legacy of social entrepreneur Michael Young, has been extremely supportive to date in sharing their thoughts and experiences. There are some other excellent examples, such as MindLab in Copenhagen and KennisLand (or KnowledgeLand) in Amsterdam, that I recently had the privilege to visit.
“From the White House (Obama has established an Office for Social Innovation) through to Singapore and New Zealand, there is a growing movement for institutions like ours to contribute to achieving positive social change through innovation. Collaboration with these institutions will be key to developing our methods and ideas further.”
A primary task will be simply raising awareness of social innovation in Australia – identifying, supporting and promoting the best social innovations across the country and getting involved on projects that will see a social impact here. And while ultimately the goal is to be a national centre of excellence in the field of social innovation and some initiatives will be pitched at a national audience, much of the Centre’s initial work will start in South Australia.
March 2010 will see the launch of Bold Ideas, Better Lives, Australia’s Social Innovation Challenge, where individuals, communities and organisations across Australia can submit their ideas to the Centre. Working closely with a shortlist of entrants, ideas will be developed into feasible projects and in the final stage up to 10 projects will be supported both financially – there is $1m on the table – as well as with capacity-building to implement their ideas.
The Centre is also looking to explore the potential of using design-thinking approaches to radically redesign social services.
“The design community, as exemplified in the work and writings of Tim Brown and the team at IDEO, is rediscovering its role in not just designing better products, but in making better lives. At the same time, constraints on public spending are forcing the public sector to think creatively about how to achieve policy outcomes in more cost-effective ways. We are keen to bring these two worlds together to experiment with and develop new ways of working and new models of service delivery,” adds Caffin.
There will be an emphasis on collaboration.
“One of the first questions we ask when conceiving a new project is “who can we work with on this?” We recognise that there is a huge range of expertise, interest and passion out there and we want to harness that power and enthusiasm and avoid reinventing the wheel. So we’ll be partnering with institutions, communities and individuals to make sure we’re finding the best way forward to achieve positive change in our society.
“Ultimately, the Centre has been set up to contribute to a more inclusive and just society for all Australians by being an incubator for socially innovative ideas and a safe space for experimentation. The pace, scale and complexity of challenges that are emerging, from climate change adaptation to the consequences of an ageing society, means that we have our work cut out. Staying relevant means addressing existing social problems while recognising and responding to new and emerging challenges. Ultimately, we will be judged on the value of the contribution we make.”
In this respect, Caffin urges the public to become directly involved: “Talk to us. Write to us. Come to our events. Dream up an idea and let us know. Is something affecting your community? Tell us your story and what you want to see changed (even better, tell us how you think you can change it). People lie at the heart of social innovation so we will be actively looking for ways to get people involved.”
For more information, visit www.tacsi.org.au or write to: info@tacsi.org.au
'The Australian Centre for Social Innovation is the latest in a series of institutions that aim to provide both the city of Adelaide and the state of South Australia with guidance in creatively addressing a raft of current and potential social problems. The Adelaide Review spoke with newly appointed CEO Brenton Caffin.
With strong support from the Premier and South Australian government, the idea for the development of an Australian Centre for Social Innovation, headquartered in Adelaide, came from a key recommendation from former Thinker in Residence, Geoff Mulgan. Mulgan argued for the role of such institutions in developing methods for social innovation and better matching the supply of good ideas to the demand of current and future social problems, of which there are no shortage.
Following Mulgan’s recommendation, the State Government agreed to provide seed funding to establish the Centre and recruited a national Board, chaired by Phillip Adams, to oversee the Centre’s development. New CEO Brenton Caffin joined the Centre in October last year and has since been working with the Board on both the business plan and program of work for 2010.
Social innovation, lest it be thought a rather woolly term, could be best described as “a novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals”. Geoff Mulgan has succinctly described social innovation as “new ways to address unmet social needs”.
South Australia has a strong tradition of social innovation, from the early development of the Torrens title, legislation to enable women to run for parliament, the establishment of the South Australian Housing Trust back in the 1930s, environmental legislation such as the container deposit and more recently the plastic bag ban and alternative accommodation initiatives such as Common Ground. Meanwhile, global examples range from the Grameen Bank’s development of micro-finance in Bangladesh through to new ways of online collaboration such as WikiPedia.
A social innovation can be a product, production process, or technology (much like innovation in general), but it can also be a principle, an idea, a piece of legislation, a social movement, an intervention, or some combination of them.
“Social innovation can take place within government, within traditional companies, or within the non-profit or third sector, but is increasingly seen to happen most effectively in the space between the three sectors,” comments Caffin.
“We will definitely be drawing lessons from a range of models, while putting our own flavour on what we do here. The Young Foundation (where Mulgan is Director), which builds on the 50 year legacy of social entrepreneur Michael Young, has been extremely supportive to date in sharing their thoughts and experiences. There are some other excellent examples, such as MindLab in Copenhagen and KennisLand (or KnowledgeLand) in Amsterdam, that I recently had the privilege to visit.
“From the White House (Obama has established an Office for Social Innovation) through to Singapore and New Zealand, there is a growing movement for institutions like ours to contribute to achieving positive social change through innovation. Collaboration with these institutions will be key to developing our methods and ideas further.”
A primary task will be simply raising awareness of social innovation in Australia – identifying, supporting and promoting the best social innovations across the country and getting involved on projects that will see a social impact here. And while ultimately the goal is to be a national centre of excellence in the field of social innovation and some initiatives will be pitched at a national audience, much of the Centre’s initial work will start in South Australia.
March 2010 will see the launch of Bold Ideas, Better Lives, Australia’s Social Innovation Challenge, where individuals, communities and organisations across Australia can submit their ideas to the Centre. Working closely with a shortlist of entrants, ideas will be developed into feasible projects and in the final stage up to 10 projects will be supported both financially – there is $1m on the table – as well as with capacity-building to implement their ideas.
The Centre is also looking to explore the potential of using design-thinking approaches to radically redesign social services.
“The design community, as exemplified in the work and writings of Tim Brown and the team at IDEO, is rediscovering its role in not just designing better products, but in making better lives. At the same time, constraints on public spending are forcing the public sector to think creatively about how to achieve policy outcomes in more cost-effective ways. We are keen to bring these two worlds together to experiment with and develop new ways of working and new models of service delivery,” adds Caffin.
There will be an emphasis on collaboration.
“One of the first questions we ask when conceiving a new project is “who can we work with on this?” We recognise that there is a huge range of expertise, interest and passion out there and we want to harness that power and enthusiasm and avoid reinventing the wheel. So we’ll be partnering with institutions, communities and individuals to make sure we’re finding the best way forward to achieve positive change in our society.
“Ultimately, the Centre has been set up to contribute to a more inclusive and just society for all Australians by being an incubator for socially innovative ideas and a safe space for experimentation. The pace, scale and complexity of challenges that are emerging, from climate change adaptation to the consequences of an ageing society, means that we have our work cut out. Staying relevant means addressing existing social problems while recognising and responding to new and emerging challenges. Ultimately, we will be judged on the value of the contribution we make.”
In this respect, Caffin urges the public to become directly involved: “Talk to us. Write to us. Come to our events. Dream up an idea and let us know. Is something affecting your community? Tell us your story and what you want to see changed (even better, tell us how you think you can change it). People lie at the heart of social innovation so we will be actively looking for ways to get people involved.”
For more information, visit www.tacsi.org.au or write to: info@tacsi.org.au
Vote for the Ignoble Prize for Economics
Reposted in full from real world economics, 1 February 2010
The Ignoble Prize for Economics, to be awarded to the three economists who contributed most to enabling the Global Financial Collapse (GFC).
Vote for three. The ballot itself can be accessed at
'Short List of Nominees for the Ignoble Prize for Economics
Fischer Black and Myron Scholes
They jointly developed the Black-Scholes model which led to the explosive growth of financial derivatives. The importance given to their hypothetical calculation of derivative prices was baneful not just because it was bogus, but also because it meant that relevant and often urgent real-world economic research was widely neglected by the profession.
Eugene Fama
His “efficient market theory” provided the moral umbrella for all sorts of greed, predatory behaviour and incompetent corporate management. It also provided the rationale for deregulation. And his theory’s widespread acceptance meant that “discussion of investor irrationality, of bubbles, of destructive speculation had virtually disappeared from academic discourse.” In these three ways Fama’s work created the environment which made possible the GFC.
Milton Friedman
He propagated the delusion, through his misunderstanding of the scientific method, that an economy can be accurately modeled using counterfactual propositions about its nature. This, together with his simplistic model of money, encouraged the development of the financial theories with unrealistic assumptions that facilitated the GFC. In short, he opened the door for everyone subsequently to theorize without fear of having to be attached to reality.
Alan Greenspan
As Chairman of the Federal Reserve System from 1987 to 2006, he both led the over expansion of money and credit that created the bubble that burst and aggressively promoted the view that financial markets are naturally efficient and in no need of regulation. Before a Congressional committee on 28 October 2008 Greenspan confessed that his theoretical beliefs of 40 years were now proven to be without foundation, hence his total confusion and failure at his job.
Assar Lindbeck
By working to make the Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (“Nobel Prize in Economics”) almost exclusively a prize for neoclassical economists, this Swedish economist has contributed significantly to the conversion of the economics profession and of world public opinion to market fundamentalism.
Robert Lucas
His development of the rational expectations hypothesis, which defined rationality as the capacity to accurately predict the future, both served to maintain Friedman’s proposition that monetary factors do not affect the real economy and, in the name of “rigor”, distanced economics even further from reality than Friedman had thought possible.
Richard Portes
As Secretary-General of the Royal Economic Society from 1992-2008, he helped suppress worries expressed by non-mainstream economists about developments in the financial sector. In 2007 he wrote a Report for the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce giving a clean bill of health to Icelandic banks only a few months before they collapsed. When investigators called attention to the real state of Icelandic banking, he wrote a series of letters to the Financial Times defending the soundness of Icelandic banks and imputing professional incompetence to those who doubted it.
Edward Prescott and Finn Kydland
For jointly developing and popularizing “Real Business Cycle” theory, which by omitting the role of credit greatly diminished the economics profession’s understanding of dynamic macroeconomic processes.
Paul Samuelson
Through his textbook Economics: An Introductory Analysis (19 English language editions and translated into 40 languages), he popularized neoclassical economics, contributing more than any other economist to its diffusion and thereby to the deregulation of financial markets which made possible the GFC.
Larry Summers
As US Secretary of the Treasury (formerly an economist at Harvard and the World Bank), he worked successfully for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which since the Great Crash of 1929 had kept deposit banking separate from casino banking. He also worked with Greenspan and Wall Street interests to torpedo efforts to regulate derivatives.
Procedures
The voting is being conducted using PollDaddy. Its system uses cookies to prevent repeat voting. A voting box showing the short-listed candidates and a link to their dossiers will remain till voting closes near the top of the right-hand column on the home page of the Real-World Economics Review Blog. Voting is open to all interested parties. Each voter can vote for up to three of the listed candidates. The ballots are secret. Voting will remain open for several weeks. No results will be announced before closing the poll.'
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