Change

Summary

A network scientist’s case against the idea that change spreads like a virus. Damon Centola argues that “successful social change is not about information; it’s about norms”, and that networks are “the prisms that determine how we see those behaviors and interpret those ideas”. Influencers matter less than clusters of mutual reinforcement at the edges: “special places, not special people”.

Rationale

Centola’s incubator neighbourhoods back our hunch that new ways of living need reinforcing contexts, because “the other environments of our lives can tug us back”.