Malcolm Gladwell on [Saturday Night Live], German philosophy, the Lunar Men, and other examples of the "social dimension of Innovat Ion". When they were not meeting, they were writing to each other with words of encouragement or advice or excitement. This was truly-in a phrase that is invariably and unthinkingly used in the pejorative-a mutual-admiration society... One person's passion-be it carriages, steam, minerals, chemistry, clocks-fired all the others. There was no neat separation of subjects... What were they doing? Darwin, in a lovely phrase, called it "philosophical laughing," which was his way of saying that those who depart from cultural or intellectual consensus need people to walk beside them and laugh with them to give them confidence... [Jenny Uglow]'s book reveals how simplistic our view of groups really is. We divide them into cults and clubs, and dismiss the former for their insularity and the latter for their banality. The cult is the place where, cut off from your peers, you become crazy. The club is the place where, surrounded by your peers, you become boring. Yet if you can combine the best of those two states-the right kind of insularity with the right kind of homogeneity-you create an environment (the BlogWeb?) both safe enough and stimulating enough to make great thoughts possible. Is this a Creative Network or Social Network?

User Options Recent Changes Help Page