I just finished re-reading The Tipping Point.

What I found most fascinating this time around was the author's point about how easily ideas are transmitted. In the book, this sounds like a fundamental human trait, to the point that we're not fully aware of how deeply the people around us influence our outlook on life.

It seems to me that if this is correct it leads to a major distinction in how we think about society and culture.

Society is what we create with geographic boundaries and laws; it's defined by who belongs to the group and where they're located. Culture is what happens spontaneously, generated by the ideas swirling around among individuals and is transient.

While culture can be bounded by the things that make up a society, and the two feed into each other, they are not not identical. Culture changes constantly as ideas change; societal changes are rarer.

It's much easier for marketing campaigns to alter culture than society; in other words, transient changes can take place. A really good viral or word of mouth campaign gets thrown from person to person and makes temporary changes in the culture (or, far more likely, in a subculture). Without constant reinforcement, though, the changes dissipate over time and are forgotten.

(The ironic bit, incidentally, is that the culture is changing so that The Tipping Point is just beginning to fall out of fashion.)

The author of The Tipping Point is an incredibly persuasive writer, which I think is part of why the book was so successful. He brings up very interesting ideas, especially about how people are influenced to act (which is rather the whole point). They do suggest a need for humility, though, about what exactly can be accomplished.