One + May 2011 - (Page 44)

> > R E B OO T Y O U R B R A I N BY JON BRADSHAW << SAFETY IN NUMBERS I’M LUCKY ENOUGH TO LIVE IN THE COSMOPOLITAN, ENGLISH SEASIDE CITY BRIGHTON & HOVE. Fifty miles from London, it’s one of the U.K.’s most popular resorts, and with its pier, promenade and lawns, the seafront is one of the city’s best-known features. I was on the lawns late last summer when I ﬁrst noticed a line that runs the length of the grass for almost a mile parallel to the beach. It was almost perfectly straight, and yet I was at a loss as to how it had come to be there; it looked as if someone had dragged a heavy sack up and down the same path over and over again until the grass wore away leaving a thin, dry, dusty track. The months came and went, and I thought nothing more of the line until last week when I found myself on the lawn again. This time, I studied it more close- ly, keen to know the origin. The answer came as a multi-colored, Lycra-clad jogger shouted warning that he was coming through. I had to move to avoid colliding with him, as he steadfastly refused to budge from his track, though he could have easily jogged around me. It became clear that while the vast seafront offered any number of options in terms of both route and terrain, a large percentage of joggers chose to take exactly the same path along my line. Perhaps the joggers are jealous of the cyclists whose ofﬁcial lane sits just a few yards away. But my theory is that once one or two runners created a visible, unofﬁcial jogging path, others simply followed suit. It’s the power of social proof. A recent study by Jukka-Pekka Onnela and Felix Reed-Tsochas examines the downloading of 44 one+ 05.11

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of One + May 2011

One + May 2011
Contents
Energy of Many
Impressions
Meeting Design Goes Mobile
Picking Brains
Agenda
Ask the Experts
Thoughts+Leaders
Overheard
Art of Travel
Web Watch
Radical Co-creation
Engagement + Innovation = Wunderbar
Top Spots
Connections
Irrelevant
The Business of Being Social
Safety in Numbers
Ads, Sponsors and Patrons
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
It’s Getting Better All the Time
Blame It on Rio
Ride Free
Learning How the Brain Learns
Just Face It
Becoming Mindful with Your Meetings
Group Think
The Mesh Meeting
Your Community
Making a Difference
Until We Meet Again

One + May 2011