Search results for gladwell

Just read a jarring piece by Malcom Gladwell’s in the latest issue of the New Yorker on the emerging connection between playing football and developing serious brain injury later in life. One study Gladwell cites finds a significantly higher proportion of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.) in the brain, a malady caused by trauma, than in the rest of the population. The problem Gladwell discovers, is in the accumulation of micro-traumas to the brain, rather than the accumulation of concussions as was previously believed.

It’s particularly disturbing to read this article as a football fan. At its best, the sport is a celebration of strength, courage, teamwork, and intelligence. Further, it is deeply woven into the American psyche. Television ratings for American football far exceed that of all other sports. FOX, CBS, NBC and ABC/ESPN have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to secure television deals. Personally, my earliest memories are of watching the Miami Dolphins with my dad. As a 12 year old, I sobbed uncontrollably when the Dolphins gave up a 10 points halftime lead to the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XVII (damn that John Riggins!!!!) Even academics wax poetic about the muscular ballet of football…check out these two Stanford Humanities professors going on about the aesthetic beauty of the sport.

While it appears that research on brain trauma is in its early stages, it seems the toll the sport takes on its participants is far greater than even they realize. From a policy perspective, it opens up the question of paternalism. When should the state step in to save individuals from themselves? The lure of current riches – both monetary and psychic – draws individuals to enter into contractual arrangements that, in many cases, leaves them worse off than if they had not played. Because they have imperfect information about future outcomes, then exchange future health for current fame and fortune. Should we allow them to?

A more vexing question is whether we as Americans have begun to construe access to football spectating as a social right? Social rights are typically those goods that government provides to help secure our well being. Examples are education, health care, etc. Typically, once Americans consider something a social right, government has a difficult time withdrawing it….see Medicare. Having gone to college in the South as I did, I’d be hard pressed to envision what the vast majority of people would do on a Fall Saturday afternoon if there were no college football to watch. I can’t imagine a politician that would even touch the question of banning football. I’m afraid we have developed such a deep, inviolable attachment to the sport that getting rid of it would be akin to getting rid of universal public education? I say this as someone who still watches the Miami Dolphins and marvels at the brilliance of the wildcat offense. But now when I watch, I’ll do it with both admiration and apprehension.

I was up in the wee hours when I saw the BBC announce that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.  I recall reading years ago that the process is not necessarily a rigorous screening, in that the decision can be guided by a select few.  I wondered if this was perceived as a contrast effect, with Barack being perceived as an internationalist, despite being in the office for a very short period of time when the nomination was submitted.  A friend of mine put on my Facebook wall a link to this article were Polish Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa echoed the sentiments of many…too fast.

Malcolm Gladwell had this Tweet::

“Question: Is the goal of the Nobel Peace Prize committee to reward progress of an individual or to encourage the progress of society?”

If we think about progress in peace, what would that look like?  What should be the next steps, globally, for the Obama administration?  It’s tough given the state of the economy, as the electorate is less interested in peace and more interested in jobs and the healthcare issue.  So, will this be a headache for him as the US decides what to do in Afghanistan?   Is there pressure for him to act in a certain way?  At the end of the day, it’s the US electorate that matters.  It might spur some thinking about creative solutions for situations like Afghanistan where peacekeeping is an oxymoron no matter the deployment of resources.  It might also accelerate some housecleaning of US detention policies of foreign suspects.  Like the Nobel Peace Prize committee and the world, we shall see.

Twitterversion::  Obama wins #Nobel Peace Prize, but what does it represent? What r next steps,globally? Natl security polcy? #ThickCulture http://url.ie/2mcp @Prof_K

Song:: If I Had A Rocket Launcher – Bruce Cockburn

I’m currently reading through George Packer’s wonderful two volume edited collection of George Orwell essays (“Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays” and “All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays”). With all due respect to the erudite defaming of George Orwell in the pages of NYRB, I love the guy. I love his lucid writing. I love his courage in criticizing what he sees as wrong. I love his methodology of putting himself in the middle of things. I love his sentimentality about hearths and his homeland. Earlier this week, I read his well-known, WWII-era essay, “England Your England,” and regard it as among his very best. I believe so much of it speaks to our current state of affairs that I’d like bring some of its key points up to date. Rather than writing a full essay (which would inevitably pale in comparison), I’d like to do a little series pulling out some points of interest. This will be the first.

Orwell begins with the claim that culture differences between nations are big and meaningful: “Till recently it was thought proper to pretend that all human beings are very much alike, but in fact anyone able to use his eyes knows that the average of human behaviour differs enormously from country to country … Things that could happen in one country could not happen in another. Hitler’s June purge, for instance, could not have happened in England.”

This sort of claim remains controversial today. Browning’s Ordinary Men argued that the Holocaust wasn’t based on intrinsic characteristics of the German people, while Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners countered with just the opposite claim. Today, we often hear much about the immutable cultural differences between Americans and Europeans (“Americans live to work, European work to live”). Advocates of a single payer system of health care have repeatedly been told that such a system would never be accepted in the United States. Tom Friedman wrote just this Sunday about how a $1 gas tax should be, but is not up for debate in the U.S. (despite sky-high gas taxes in European countries). The mandatory religious rhetoric in any American political speech (e.g., “God Bless America”) would be the cause of scandal in Europe.

While such limitations on political speech and manner of living are profound burdens, Orwell also claims that being a member of a national culture is, ultimately, meaningful to each of us. “And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time … Good or evil, it is yours, you belong to it, and this side the grave you will never get away from the marks that it has given you.”

Though we might threaten to leave (if Bush is elected in 2004) and though the vile racism and hatred and ugly nationalism at town halls and “tea party” events might disgust us, America will always feel like a home to those of us who were raised here. We breathe easier in the air we’re accustomed to. Talking loudly while eating a slice of pizza and walking down a city block, the choice of sixteen varieties of mustard in the grocery store, and the simple pleasure of a gas-guzzling muscle car and an open road are, for better or for worse, things that feel like home.

“Yes,” says Orwell, “there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own.”

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes about the continuing legacy of the rice paddy for Asian cultures, the “culture of honor” in the American South, and the significance of hierarchy in Korean society. To be sure, our nations and our cultures constrain our behavior and even our ways of thinking. But perhaps perversely, the very culture that limits us also comforts us.

Anyone curious on how how pro-single payer physicians think about the issues, I encourage you to check out the Physicians for a National Healthcare Program {PNHP} FAQ.  Here’s a list of PNHP single-payer resources, as well.  As stated in an earlier post, I view health care as infrastructure that can spur innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship and like many in the biotech. industry, I see a single-payer model {public finance of healthcare, as opposed to provision} as important for implementation of genomic medicine.

I won’t go into the healthcare debate and media circus, but will link to an article on a recent NBC poll.  Interestingly, 36% believe that Obama’s reform efforts are a good idea, but 53% support a paragraph describing his plans.  It’s a communication problem.  If you think all of the cacophony at the town halls is helping the GOP, you’re wrong.  The NBC poll reports 62% disapprove of their handling of health care.

The PNHP is highly critical of the administrative costs of healthcare and are no fans of the insurance industry.  Insurance also affects how healthcare providers do their jobs.  I have access to hospital data that’s used to “manage care” to maximize insurance reimbursement.  Moreover, there are powerful incentives in the insurance industry to maximize profits by denying claims.  The PNHP recognizes that a single-payer system will adversely affect insurance::

“The new system will still need some people to administer claims. Administration will shrink, however, eliminating the need for many insurance workers, as well as administrative staff in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes. More health care providers, especially in the fields of long-term care, home health care, and public health, will be needed, and many insurance clerks can be retrained to enter these fields. Many people now working in the insurance industry are, in fact, already health professionals (e.g. nurses) who will be able to find work in the health care field again. But many insurance and health administrative workers will need a job retraining and placement program. We anticipate that such a program would cost about $20 billion, a small fraction of the administrative savings from the transition to national health insurance.”

So, shouldn’t we be concerned about insurance ?  Are they getting a bad rap?  Are they really evil?  Isn’t it a part of financial intermediation, providing the critical function of polling resources and spreading risk?

Malcolm Gladwell in a 2005 New Yorker article did a good job of explaining two forms of insurance:: social and actuarial.  Social insurance pools money from many for a public good, regardless of usage, in order to sustain an infrastructure.  Actuarial insurance is quite different and has been the pathway that US healthcare has been going::

“How much you pay is in large part a function of your individual situation and history: someone who drives a sports car and has received twenty speeding tickets in the past two years pays a much higher annual premium than a soccer mom with a minivan.”

Think pre-existing conditions.  The actuarial model is why biotech. wants a single-payer system.  Genomics identify risks and will eventually match individuals, diseases, and therapies on the basis of genetic information.  Doctors see this on the horizon and Robin Cook, MD offered this NY Times op. ed. on how he had revised his views on universal health care.

But, if you were to craft a business model, which would you choose to invest in, if you wanted to make the most profit?::  {1} social insurance that pools equal premiums from all and allocates care to all or {2} actuarial insurance that charges more for people who have a higher likelihood of becoming ill and can deny care for pre-existing conditions or treatment deemed unwarranted.  The actuarial model can easily align with a set of values of individualism, as well as moral judgments about treating certain diseases {e.g., a smoker with lung cancer}.  I’ve seen people on discussion boards claim that “I can take care of my own” and perplexed why everyone else cannot.  How I see it, the current debates are really about using individualism to protect corporate interests.  I see plenty of incentives for the actuarial insurance industry and politicians to fan the argumentative flames about wild-eyed hypotheticals, as opposed to substantive debates about implementation. The devil is in the details.

Gladwell concluded his article with the following::

“In the rest of the industrialized world, it is assumed that the more equally and widely the burdens of illness are shared, the better off the population as a whole is likely to be. The reason the United States has forty-five million people without coverage is that its health-care policy is in the hands of people who disagree, and who regard health insurance not as the solution but as the problem.”

Twitterversion:: Who will weep 4 actuarial US health insur. indstry? Are they/backers obfuscating real debates on implmntatn w/histrionics?http://url.ie/28qa @Prof_K

Song:: Pay For It – Lloyd Cole

Crossposted on Rhizomicomm

I’m currently working on an ethnographic paper examining innovation in a global context.  The above map is a depiction of innovation clusters throughout the world, on the dimensions of patent growth and firm diversity.  As it turns out, the area I’m looking at is off the chart with very high growth and few firms.  The area is also one where western notions of property rights are out the window.  The main question we are addressing is how should firms innovate globally when their intellectual property {IP} rights are tenuous or uncertain?  The economic argument for granting exclusive property rights is to ensure an entrepreneurial entity has the incentives to commercialize an idea.  So, an innovator is allowed a monopolist position for a period of time, allowing for a path to cash and attracting investors, in order to ensure there is grist for the innovative mill.  In our research, exclusive property rights may exist, but aren’t enforced.  This begs the question, why is there growth?  Why would anyone invest in such a chaotic environment?  There must be some value in doing so.  Finally, I think it would be interesting to re-examine the above map with cultural dimensions, not in terms of sweeping generalizations, but nuanced, regional differences like the ones AnnaLee Saxenian found between Silicon Valley and Route 128 in Massachusetts.

Macleans had two articles on the buzz generated by Chris Anderson’s {Wired editor and proponent of the long tail} new book, Free: The Future at a Radical Price, which Russell has referred to. The first article talked Anderson’s ideas of “freeconomics,” where costs of storage and distribution are approaching zero and consumer behavior can go viral when the price is free.  It goes on to describe how critics were lambasting Anderson for his notions, including Malcolm Gladwell’s savaging of the book in the New Yorker. The other article invokes Frankfurt School critical theorist Walter Benjamin to highlight a trend where what is valued is what cannot be readily reproduced and digitized…the return of aura of the experience.

How does this relate to global IP concerns?

Let’s assume that we’re in an economic reality where intellectual “work” can often be readily digitized and reproduced infinitely.  We’re talking creative content, educational resources, biotechnology/genetic information, etc., so it would seem that the producers of music, film, news journalism, the university lecture, and the sequenced genome all have a dog in this fight.  Producers of valuable things want to profit from their efforts.  Their investors demand it.  Here comes Chris Anderson saying that the new economic model is to offer things for free.

Enter Malcolm Gladwell and other naysayers.  Gladwell asserts that Anderson is wrong on several counts.  The YouTube business model has failed to make money for Google, hence the “free” business model is untenable.  The logic of “free” is flawed, as capital-intensive infrastructures, costly complementary goods and services, and downstream costs often mean that goods simply cannot be free.  One can nitpick the flaws in Gladwell’s arguments.  He cites that the costs of clinical trials is what drives up pharmaceutical prices, which is true today, but the objective with biotech. is to use genomics to better target the use of molecules for specific therapies geared towards specific diseases and specific people, based on genetic profiling.  To use an “Obamaism,” the idea is to bend the innovation curve.

When IP faces rampant piracy or when property rights are not or cannot be enforced, globally, the potential of infinite reproduction puts pricing pressures towards the free, whether the producer likes it or not.  This is what’s happening to the firms in our research.  The successful global firms we studied are the ones that are embracing cultural particulars and negotiating as best they can their claims to IP revenue streams.

Interestingly, Chris Anderson has been accused of cribbing IP from sources like Wikipedia, acting like a veritable Web 2.0 Jack Sparrow.  The question I have is does this or should this diminish the value of his book by readers?  Is this a violation of some “authorly” ethics or is this just the new IP where everything is up for grabs and the key is deliver value.  Anderson even stated that one could get the information in Free by compiling blog posts and articles, but that the book adds value by synthesizing it.  He also practices what he preaches.  One can read Free for free, but just because it’s free, doesn’t mean it will be easy.  The free versions of the book text are limited by format or are DRM-protected.  Some consumers are complaining because of different expectations of what “free” means, but this approach is consistent to Anderson’s core ideas.  Being in Canada, I’ll have to jump through more hoops to read this for free, due to publishing restrictions, but I’ll figure it out and I’m actually looking forward to reading it.

Is this commerce or is this anarchy?  The lessons being learned are similar to those in the second Macleans article.  The focus needs to be on the delivery of value, rather than the protection of rights.  Globalization is achieving what a thousand socialist mandates could not.  The erosion of property rights is forcing firms to figure out how to deliver value when an innovation is free.  Web 2.o has offered firms the ability to do what I have called “stagesetting” in several research projects and a case on Pixar.  Stagesetting is where a firm has a sequential approach to its ultimate strategic objectives.  We see firms trying to leverage network effects to create value for users through sites and technologies using social media.  Flickr has no value with hundreds of users, but has tremendous value with millions.  One can talk about MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook revenues in terms of advertising, but the holy grail is the data mining and finding what the exact value proposition is to generate revenues from business and institutional clients.  The “freemium” model of the basics for free, but added features are extra, is based upon stagesetting, where value is created.  What Anderson offers is a glimpse into a global economic reality and gives firms the incentives to rethink the nature of value…or they can try their luck in the courts, like the RIAA did with prosecutions of a Minnesota mom and college kids.

Twitterversion:: Will IP matter in global contxt?ChrisAnderson=Web2.0 JackSparrow decentrng IP auth,making value-creation salient. http://url.ie/23kj @chr1sa @Prof_K

Song:: O.P.P – Naughty By Nature lyrics

In 1997, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a New Yorker article called “The Coolhunt” that has become something of a cult classic. In the article, he follows an employee of Converse whose sole (no pun intended) responsibility was to find “cool” people and note their style trends so that Converse could co-opt them. Gladwell argued that, in a reversal of the “trickle down” model of cultural diffusion (in which elite fashion designers ultimately decide what’s cool), we were now witnessing an era of bottom up culture.

Perhaps it’s a poor parallel, but I notice that the Blueray version of the new Dark Knight DVD allows people to “record and post user-generated commentaries over the film using My WB Commentary.” That is to say, in addition to listening to Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale discuss the movie, listeners can create their own audio commentaries over the Internet. This new capacity seems like a natural development in the people-powered media era of YouTube, but is one with real possibilities for both art and politics (as it becomes more widely disseminated). How about a Ralph Nader commentary on Wall-E? Or Bob Woodward on Frost/Nixon? Or forget that … what about normal people having the ability to provide rich in-depth, long-form commentary on films? It seems to me to be an example of bottom-up culture that allows more meaningful discourse than most of what’s on YouTube.

Is anybody else excited about this technology? Am I over-estimating its potential? Is it inherently too closely controlled by corporate hands to allow for meaningful citizen commentary? Other thoughts?