Human Relationships
I stumbled across “Small Change” by Malcolm Gladwell on The New Yorker’s website. In light of my experiences here in London with the student protests in November and December, this article was very interesting. Gladwell posits that Twitter and Facebook do not build the “strong-tie” relationships necessary for people to engage in high-risk activism.
This reminds me of what I saw 20 minutes ago.
I witnessed a woman whip out her iPhone and looked at the screen intently just to avoid the pesky sales staff guarding the underground exits, in hope of skipping this sales pitch about a (often not) lucrative deal. It goes to show how outdated guerrilla sales tactic is and the focus on building human relationship is increasingly lacking in this business environment.
I think human relationship has become a rare commodity and is expected to become more important in the near-future. It’s interesting to know that not only is relationships sufficient to get things going, but close relationships is a precursor for certain high-risk activism.
Mmmm…think think think…
