Herd - the hidden truth about who we are

How things spread (2) Doing what Arthur and Ben do

Say hello to two of my favourite humans on the planet: Arthur and Ben (waves in a rather exaggerated manner)

They live in Merka although their mummy (sic) and daddy are English. Very English.

Just spending a little time with them makes it really clear how important copying is to the younger members of our species. Infact it's what they do all day long. They try out words, sounds, expressions and behaviours that they've seen elsewhere (mostly from their immediate family and their playmates but often before they understand what the thing is that they're doing). It's their number 1 learning strategy. They're doing what the NLP gang call "modelling": that is, copying

What they're not doing is considering information from the outside world, processing it, weighing the pros and cons of different courses of action and then acting. No, they're just copying. It's the most brilliant gift to our species: it allows us to learn rapidly from each other, not just as infants but all through our life. In all kinds of situations.

Of course, you might think that it's important only for kids (unfortunately puberty doesn't switch the mechanism off so we all keep it front and centre) or for unimportant or superficial things (Alex has recently showed how terminology/jargon spreads through academic communities on the basis of copying and you will no doubt remember the observation of Thomas Kuhn that the great scientific revolutions spread by folk copying what their peers are doing and seem to be finding useful rather than by weighing the evidence). But it's the same stuff - the same underlying mechanism that the boys are driven by.

This is what drives the spread of ideas, opinions and behaviours: our copycat selves.

Without it we wouldn't have anything like culture or advancement of learning - it'd be really hard for anything to be transmitted across populations and as a result, we'd certainly be a lot more stupid, individually and collectively. But at least we wouldn't have bad trendspotters because nothing would spread.

With it, we get to take advantage of what our neighbours (and their neighbours) have invented or copied themselves; without it, we have to work stuff out from scratch which would tend to favour Ray Mears over you and me: some one who can come up with tricks on the spot....every time

Now, of course when it comes to thinking about own behaviour, none of us likes to see ourselves as copying machines (this seems to be one of those things our minds keep from us and our cultures tend to teach us otherwise also) but that doesn't mean it isn't so...

But out of the mouths of children, eh?

How things spread

Been thinking about this question quite a lot recently so here's the first in a series of posts to clariy things - one thing at a time.

Ok, the thing is that we assume that it's what m>we do - in marketing or management or government - that changes stuff out there in the world: that gets a behaviour or an idea to spread through a population.

Of course, this is only natural given that's what we get paid for - which politician wants to stand up and say "crime is down - not that our policies have much to do with it"; it's largely due to factors beyond our control.
Which marketer is going to admit that the growth of their brand has bugger all to do with marketing's actions (premium vodkas: discuss). Which manager with a KPI to hit....

The truth is that it's all about them out there: most behaviours and ideas spread through populations because of what the members of the populations do or think or say in response to each other. That's why most big social trends surprise us - why as Freakonomics pointed out, the "broken window" strategy to clean up NYC is probably less important in explaining the 90s reduction in crime in the city than the demographic changes kicking in.

Put simply: as far as how stuff spreads, it's more Pullyou than Pushme (to bastardise the old Dr Doolittles). Folk do what they see around them; believe what their peers do - whatever their individual brains tell them. Our attempts to exert 'exogenous' (extra-system) influence is always going to be much less important than the 'endogenous' (intra-system) factors that shape the propagation of an idea or behaviour through a population.

BTW Think this is what Cluetrain really meant about markets being like conversations

If this is right, then strategy thinking needs to be rooted more in how the underlying mechanics of propagation works (human-human emulation within a given system etc) than in why individual folk do what they do.

Put another way: forget doing stuff TO folk; do stuff WITH them

The information machine mashup

Cool mashup from the chaps/esses at Scribemedia of the Eames film of same name

Yeah, I know it's for a real live company - a record of some corporate event - but still like it.

Go you crazy NYC types!

PS be honest: how do you know that things with the Eames handle are going to be cool?

Partly because folk like me tell you, but partly because it seems that that's what everyone thinks....

Stop and re-start the week

Hat tip to Charles: on Start the Week today, the great Raymond Tallis on how we've misunderstood what lies between our ears. And how much of our nature lies in copying each other - the story of the 2 year laughter epidemic in a small village in Kenya in the 1960s and the social importance of tears. If you want to hear more of Raymond go here or here..

Some interesting stuff about whether each of us knows ourselves better than others do - not sure I agree with the great man, here. Think the tears thing is a big clue for me...

UPDATE yes, this is the same fella giving "neuroaesthetics" a good kicking in the Times last week. Well spotted, Carruthers

And appropriately (if you've been following the debate) you get a free Dan Dennett in the same broadcast also (now when can you say that) talking about what funny is "for"...and how evolutionary mechanisms might explain stuff like this. Go listena

Only on the Beeb, eh? a

More Green Herd

Hat tip to Marty/PSFK for this spot on Michael Pollan's ruminations on why it's worth bothering 'setting an example' - why Gandhi's "being the change you want to see in the world" is right (or might turn out to be).

It's a Herd thing...

BTW if you haven't bought a copy of Grant's Green Manifesto (pic) go do it now

It's true, I do

When I travel it always takes a while to digest things I've seen or done.

So a couple of weeks on, my NYC trip's composting nicely. What it all means is slowly becoming clear to me - more as it does, I promise.

Meanwhile, here's me (and Scott) talking at the ARF about how stuff spreads and what to do about it from a research p.o.v. Think - despite nerves - that it worked OK in the end (NB the fella sitting behind me is Duncan Watts - top fella btw). Thanks to ARF for the invite...

Caught up with a bunch of lovely folk while I was in town - Faris, Koops, Tash, Duncan and (the Other) Anomaly folk, Noah, Paul and the guys at Naked NYC, Bob, Barbara, John and Susan and the Brainjuicer gang and of course my old chum Domenico. And London friends Nicky and Hugo and their brood out of town...

The only comrades I missed out on were Brian Collins who's got a new funky business down in Soho and Mark Wnek who was off having an op. Next time

I know it's silly but just walking the streets made me happy

I heart...

A doctor writes: why most of the Brainy stuff is nonsense

Hat tip to Sair.

Great piece in the Times on why claims made for the application of neuroscience to literature are more than a bit premature and at best foolish.

Anyone thinking of using scanning or EEGs or some other tool from the labs, please note.

You're looking in the wrong place, through the wrong lens and mistaking a white coat for insight. Not least because we are - at heart - HERD creatures and not isolated and independent biocomputers.

"For the extraordinary thing about human beings – and what captures what is human – is that they transcend their bodies; that human experience is not solitary sentience but has a public face; it belongs to a community of minds"

Now, let's not have any more of this nonsense, please

Thank you for your attention

A year on...

It's a year since the Virginia Tech shooting.

Interesting to see how attempts to prevent another incident are based in individualist thinking: identifying and removing pathological individuals...

...as opposed to working out a plan how to stop the copycat effect which seems to be behind its spread

Anti-design design

Amid all the excitement recently about design being the new black (unfair, I know given that I agree with what Paul's saying and have actually worked with the Collinsmeister and know how good he really is!), I've got to say I loved my visit to this store in Norwalk Connecticut 10 days ago. Me and Arthur (3) and Ben (1+) (and their parents, too).

Animatronic fruit and veg, theatrical displays, loads to wow and ahh at. In fact a veritable emporium of social objects: lots to interact around both in the store and after. And all of it in appalling "taste".

A far cry from the loneliness of aisle 17 of Sainsburytescomorrisonsasdaland, indeed. Brilliant!

Course, Paul's still on the money about design...

Making you an offer you can't refuse...

Image c/o Businessweek

I don't know if you spotted this piece last week on what Managers can learn from the Mafia (and no it's not kill everybody who disrespects you or gets in your way....)

The book is now on order. Sounds more interesting than "My Brilliant Career" vol 328, doesn't it?

UPDATE but not as good as this...