Alan Anderson: Summary of introduction & chapter one

    The introduction to Malcom Gladwells book, The Tipping Point truly caught my attention.  What I always thought intresting as a child were epedemics.  The way they come to be and develop an existance within our society.  He also brings up and describes what exactly causes these epedemics to ''tip''. 

     The author uses an example in the beginning of the introduction of the fad, trend, and eventually the epedemic of people wearing the shoes '''Hush Puppies''.  That started simply because two individuals who were associated with a cool or hip scene decided to bring the shoes back by wearing them.  This then caused a reaction similar to that of the flu.  Eventually everyone was catching the sickness figuretively speaking, by wearing the shoes.  He then further goes on talking about New York City and how he big apples crime rates went down at an increasing rate.  Thus portraying two epedimics that came to existance by contageious behaviors in society.  He goes on to talk in chapter one about the spread of STD's (syphilis) and about aids.  STD's became an epedemic and were spread mainly by the ignorance of the people.  He goes on to talk about the three rules of epedemics.  The three rules are the law of few, the stickiness factor, and the power of context. It is intresting to see how these epedemics come to play a part in society along with human ignorance.