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Blink: طرفة عين

2010-03-28T21:54:00.003+03:00

كما ذكرت سابقا إن هذا ثاني إصدارات الكاتب المشهور مالكوم جلادويل Blink أو )طرفة عين( الذي أحدث ضجة إعلامية وقت نشر الكتاب في عام 2005. الجدير بالذكر أن المؤلف قد جنح لمبدأ بني على أساسه الكتاب بشكل عام وهو موضوع بحثه حيث وصف "التشريح الدقيق" thin slicing بأنه أحيانا يعتبر أفضل من الأبحاث العلمية في الوصول إلى خلاصة. على سبيل المثال كيفية معرفة ما إذا كان فن تراثي حقيقي أم مزيف، أو انتخاب رئيس الولايات المتحدة بتحليل الظروف المحيطة والحياتية. لطالما برع المؤلف في تصوراته واطروحاته إلا انه لم يترك عيوب هذا النوع من الظاهرة من حيث تحيز الدماغ لنوع من القرارات التي لا تعتبر منصفة. كذلك فقد اسرد قصة صراع بيبسي وكوكا كولا والحرب التسويقية التي خاضها كل منهما في هذا المجال. Blink كتاب يأخذ القارئ لبعض حدود العقل البشري المتطرفة بصياغة شيقة من قبل المؤلف والذي يشدك لقراءة الكتاب إلى آخره.

نقطة القمة Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

2010-03-27T20:22:00.004+03:00

الكاتب المعروف مالكوم جلادويل في جريدة نيويورك تايمز يتطرق للكثير من المواضيع التي يتسائل عنها الناس من واقع التجارب اليومية والتي من خلالها يفهم البشر انفسهم بصورة اكثر وضوحاً ، لقد قام المؤلف باصدار كتابين تمتعا بالتربع على عرش افضل مبيعات لفترة ليست بالقصيرة. فكتاب

Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

او نقطة القمة ان صح التعبير هو اول كتاب يقوم الكاتب مالكوم جلادويل باصداره سنة 2000 حيث يتعرض للعديد من التجارب او الظواهر مثل صرعات الازياء او قصص نجاح مثل البرنامج المعروف شارع السمسم او اتجاهات الجرائم...

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking!

2010-03-23T17:12:00.001+03:00

Well, as a huge fan of Gladwell's last book, The Tipping Point, I was excited last week to finally get my hands on his new effort: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. This time around Gladwell's basic thesis is that often snap judgements (what he calls "thin slicing") can be more accurate than well researched, careful analysis. Gladwell uses many examples (most are interesting) to demonstrate this behavior such as determining when art is faked, sizing up car buyers, picking presidential candidates and determining the characteristics of a person by observing their living space. This has always been Gladwell's talent: taking just-under-the-radar topics and bringing them into the public's view through great journalism and storytelling.
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Gladwell is also careful to examine the flipside of this phenomenon: the times when "thin slicing" misleads us or gives us the wrong results. For instance, he presents examples where the mind works based on biases that don't necessarily enter the realm of conscious thought, but are nevertheless there (age, race, height, and so on).
It's a great topic and Gladwell sets it up with some wonderful examples, but then the book begins to have problems. First, the book is a little too anecdotal. Anyone who has ever had a 200-level psych class knows that what looks like cause and effect may be accounted for by an independent variable that wasn't considered (e.g., concluding cancer rates are higher in some area of the country because of pollution, when in fact the area has higher smoking rates as well). Given this, I found that too often conclusions are made on basic handwaving, or that important aspects of studies are not mentioned. For instance, Gladwell describes a study were observers are asked to determine certain characteristics (such as truthfulness, consciensciousness, etc.) of students by observing their dorm rooms; but, never does he mention how exactly one would determine these characteristics of individuals in a scientific manner for comparison. Such omissions leave the reader a little less than convinced.
Nevertheless, even with this flaw the first third of the book supports the thesis and makes for the usual entertaining reading; but things derail from there. The examples start to seem more peripheral: a rogue commander beating the conventional forces in a war game exercise, an artist known as Kenna who apparently should have made it big but didn't (why this example is interesting I've yet to figure out), and some rehash about coke vs pepsi from one of his older articles.
By the end of the book the whole thing derails into examples that just don't seem appropriate for the topic. Sure a study of why Pepsi always does better than Coke in blind tastes tests is interesting (and you can read his article on this without buying the book on Gladwell's web site), but does a study of "sips" vs "whole-can drinking" — people prefer sweet for sips (Pepsi) — really say something about unconscious rapid cognition?
One of Gladwell's greatest strengths is in recognizing interesting things, and then bringing them into conscious awareness so we actually realize these things are happening (whether it be tipping points or rapid cognition). I think he's partly achieved that in this book, but it doesn't come together the way the Tipping Point does. One gets the idea that this topic may have been better handled in an article rather than a full blown book. Source

Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

2010-03-20T18:41:00.004+03:00

Malcolm Gladwell is an author full of questions about nearly everything: from the extraordinary to the mundane. This widely read New York Times writer has written two books that help us understand ourselves better. Albeit different in scope, both have enjoyed lengthy stays on the best seller’s lists.

Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000), Gladwell’s first book, is larger in terms of its ideas. The reader is treated to several fascinating anecdotes that explain phenomena from fashion trends and crime waves, to the success of television’s Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues.
Blink (2005), on the other hand has a narrower focus. The author delves into seemingly ordinary, everyday occurrences: split-second decisions. Technically known as rapid cognition, this field studies the "kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye." Gladwell wants business and other leaders to recognize the importance of one’s feelings in the decision-making process. Learning to value our first impressions will improve our decisions and leadership skills, says Gladwell.
Gladwell’s stories are his greatest strength and make the books worth reading, even if you don’t buy into his theories. Gladwell draws upon a handful of stories to demonstrate his ideas. All are artfully told and contain fascinating characters whose situations are further analyzed by numerous experts from the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology and others. This ability to incorporate experts from varied backgrounds not only adds depth to Gladwell’s theories, it further draws the reader in, exposing us to areas otherwise unknown – probably one of the main reasons to read in the first place!
Through these stories, Gladwell tells us how word of mouth can effect broad change (Paul Revere’s ride), how an old-fashioned shoe style became hot couture. In Blink, one of the main stories shows how some art experts who ignored their instincts were fooled by a fake, while another relates how soldiers can be taught to make life and death decisions.

Buyology

2010-03-19T16:28:00.001+03:00

In BUYOLOGY, Lindstrom presents the astonishing findings from his groundbreaking, three-year, seven-million-dollar neuromarketing study, a cutting-edge experiment that peered inside the brains of 2,000 volunteers from all around the world as they encountered various ads, logos, commercials, brands, and products. His startling results shatter much of what we have long believed about what seduces our interest and drives us to buy.
Among the questions he explores:

* Does sex actually sell? To what extent do people in skimpy clothing and suggestive poses persuade us to buy products?
* Despite government bans, does subliminal advertising still surround us - from bars, to highway billboards, to supermarket shelves?
* Can "Cool" brands, like i-pods, trigger our mating instincts?
* Can other senses - smell, touch, and sound - be so powerful as to physically arouse us when we see a product?
* Do companies copy from the world of religion and create rituals - like drinking a Corona with a lime - to capture our hard-earned dollars?

My 1st Blog

2010-03-18T16:18:00.003+03:00

This is my 1st blog on the internet. After several years of being a user, i decided to become a contributor!