Michael Tresca

“We have given teens more money, so they can construct their own social and material worlds more easily. We have given them more time to spend among themselves — and less time in the company of adults. We have given them e-mail and beepers and, most of all, cellular phones, so that they can fill in all the dead spots in their day — dead spots that might once have been filled with the voices of adults — with the voices of their peers. That is a world ruled by the logic of word of mouth, by the contagious messages that teens pass among themselves. Columbine is now the most prominent epidemic of isolation among teenagers. It will not be the last.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“When people are overwhelmed with information and develop immunity to traditional forms of communication, they turn instead for advice and information to the people in their lives whom they respect, admire, and trust. The cure for immunity is finding Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It’s whether our work fulfills us.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“He ties this sorry truth to four fundamental deficiencies in existing wargames: first, that the umpire’s judgment is constrained by the rules; second, that the rules themselves are too rigid to apply to realistic battlefield situations; third, that the calculation of points of damage is overcomplicated and ultimately of little value to the simulation; fourth and finally, that the complexity of the rules is a discouraging impediment to learning the role of the umpire. These criticisms, once they became known to”
― Jon Peterson, Playing at the World