{"id":277,"date":"2009-01-11T19:47:42","date_gmt":"2009-01-12T02:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/?p=277"},"modified":"2021-06-12T03:35:48","modified_gmt":"2021-06-12T03:35:48","slug":"follow-up-on-gladwell-and-other-aspostles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/2009\/01\/11\/follow-up-on-gladwell-and-other-aspostles\/","title":{"rendered":"Follow up on Gladwell and Other Aspostles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"inline_image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-images\/inline\/berlin_wall.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nWow.\u00a0 I thought I didn&#8217;t care for Gladwell&#8217;s brand of slick packaged pop-intellectualism.\u00a0 It looks like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/\">The Register<\/a>\u00a0has even less patience than I.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Gladwell has made a career out of handing simple, vacuous truths to people and dressing them up with flowery language and an impressionistic take on the scientific method. Hive minders seem to love this garbage for obvious reasons. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2007\/01\/20\/freak_tipping_point\/page2.html\">01\/20\/2007<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For some reason, Gladwell is paid tens of thousands of dollars for flimsy stories about companies taking &#8220;unique&#8221; approaches to solving problems when they aren&#8217;t actually doing anything of the sort. In his corporate pep-talks, Gladwell describes a utopian vision that can never be realized, while doling out pithy gems such as, &#8220;ability plus experience equals expertise.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2005\/12\/09\/mattson_open_cookie\/print.html\">10\/09\/2005<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And lastly<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;&#8230;In embracing the diversity of human beings we will find the true way to human happiness.&#8221;\u00a0 So there you&#8217;ve got Gladwell in essence: he always ends with a Hallmark style greeting telling you something sweet, bland and uplifting &#8211; that you already knew.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2008\/11\/30\/malcolm_gladwell_no\/\">11\/30\/2008<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>All very ouchy, and peharps even a little bitchy.\u00a0 For a more sober, but equally critical perspective on not only Gladwell, but his self-styled economic prophet brethern Surowiecki and Anderson, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/5027445\/is-the-bad-economy-killing-the-business-meme\">this Gawker piece<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And that fact gets at the heart, I think, of why people are turning against the svengalis of new marketing. They&#8217;ve all become hugely famous and sought-after on the 5-figure lecture circuit by penning ephemeral &#8220;bibles&#8221; about the next big thing, proving only that they themselves were it. Can you really blame skeptics in a time of scarcity for denying them the ability to have their cake and pop out of it, too?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My point here is to wonder if we actually are beginning to demand more and these journalists simply cannot bear the scrutiny, if we are not letting crap win?\u00a0 Or is this like Soviet communism, where these guys are just\u00a0getting crushed under the stress of thier bullshit?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow.\u00a0 I thought I didn&#8217;t care for Gladwell&#8217;s brand of slick packaged pop-intellectualism.\u00a0 It looks like The Register\u00a0has even less patience than I. Gladwell has made a career out of handing simple, vacuous truths to people and dressing them up with flowery language and an impressionistic take on the scientific method. Hive minders seem to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/parCYG-4t","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":342,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}