The last time Malcolm Gladwell wrote in the New Yorker, it was the same issue as the Facebook sonnet.
That seemed hyperbolic to me, so I pulled out every issue between this week’s and that. I can’t find Gladwell’s name in any T.O.C. from any issue between the May 16th and November14th.
Curious…
“The Tweaker” is classic Gladwell. Take a sociological hypothesis and slap an attractive label-story on top. VIOLA! An engaging read about a engaging genius named:
STEVE JOBS
Gladwell takes the jerk personality of Jobs and applies it to the nature of an editor – someone who takes preexisting creativity and hammers it bloody, only to reveal folded steel afterward. That May article shows up in “The Tweaker”, even to the point of borrowing.
So of course I pulled it out.
“Creation Myth” in the “America just erased bin Ladin from the planet” issue shows how the mouse, for instance, was invented by Douglas Engelbart. Douglas didn’t care about much – only the freedom of thought unleashed onto technology. He invented a device that controlled a cursor on a screen through a movable box, hoping to translate animal movement into technological movement. He called it a “mouse.”
Xerox PARC took that idea and made a $300 version for their $16,000 “personal computer.” Jobs bribed Xerox to let him peek and cranked out the $15 mouse that you used to click either your browser icon, the URL bar or this post. Unless, of course, you’re using an iPad. Invention, innovation, tweaking. That’s the Jobs process. He editorialized technology, or as he might say, “I’ve always seen Apple standing here – at the intersection of technology and the fine arts.”
Gladwell comes back this week with a short, two-page article about a man who yells “I’ll know it when I see it,” at a commercial copywriter who’s begging at high decibal, “Tell me what you want.” It’s one among a series of articles in the New Yorker, Time magazine and others that focuses on invention an innovation. Perhaps there’s a push from up top for people to start inventing before we grow stale. Or perhaps people feel restless and want to start inventing again. Either way (by assignment or by passion) it’s curious that Gladwell’s last two articles, in particular, focus on invention.
It reminds me of the journey I’m taking with my world. I am writing, but I’m also tweaking, editing, hoping to innovate. Who will win out? The innovator or the inventor? Time will tell…
Meanwhile, go check out Gladwell’s article.
Malcolm Gladwell is such a fantastic writer!
It’s so true. He’s so clean, simple and agreeable. Every time you read him it’s like, “well yeah! that makes perfect sense!”
great post!
Thanks, sis!
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