The tipping point
Upon the recommendation of a business leader I highly respect, I read the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. This book talks about uncorrelated incremental changes that lead to a giant change (think runaway process.) Malcolm’s background is in disease propagation. The tipping point is when an epidemic reaches critical mass, at which point it becomes very difficult to contain it. You can see similar trends in nuclear reactions, word-of-mouth viral marketing, and ofcourse rumors.
On a related note, over the last few months, I’ve noticed an increased interest in running Linux as the primary platform. People seem to be amazed that a default installation of a modern distribution like Fedora or Ubuntu comes with so much fully functional, free software. Is this the tipping point for the adoption of Linux?
I find this very intriguing. A couple of years back, my friends and I started a Linux User Group at SFU called SFLUG. Back then, there seemed to be artificial roadblocks to the adoption of Linux (most important of these were the “free” availability of Microsoft software.) Having used Linux for over half a decade, I didn’t understand this at that time. Now I think I do.