Everything starts from Zero One (thanks to @fredinchina). Even the highest mountain was a molehill once, even the great people who ever lived in the world were babies once and they knew as much as any other babies, not much. From there, we keep on improving, little by little. Each day of improvement is just like any other day…then suddenly it happens…the scales tipped.

The scale was tipped over at its critical mass and there is a giant spike! Take the case of Facebook and Twitter, both were virtual unknowns once, then as it slowly builds up its user base, suddenly it tipped and it seems like the whole world knows about it! This is a short research about a major effect, we can call it the The Tipping Point as by Malcolm Gladwell, or the 100th Monkey Effect which originated from Lawrence Blair and Lyall Watson.

Let’s take a look at Malcolm Gladwell’s version of the effect in his book, The Tipping Point:

The Tipping Point

“…It’s a book about change. In particular, it’s a book that presents a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does.

…it’s that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics. The Tipping Point is an examination of the social epidemics that surround us.

…My argument is that it is also the way that change often happens in the rest of the world. Things can happen all at once, and little changes can make a huge difference. That’s a little bit counterintuitive. As human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect.

…It’s the name given to that moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass. It’s the boiling point. It’s the moment on the graph when the line starts to shoot straight upwards.

…I spent a great deal of time in the book talking about the way our minds work–and the peculiar and sometimes problematic ways in which our brains process information. Our intuitions, as humans, aren’t always very good. Changes that happen really suddenly, on the strength of the most minor of input, can be deeply confusing. People who understand The Tipping Point, I think, have a way of decoding the world around them.

Source: The Tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

A story about social change.
By Ken Keyes Jr.
The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years.

In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.

An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes — the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let’s further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.

THEN IT HAPPENED!

By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea…Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.

Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.

Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people.

But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!

My courteous readers, at this point, many of you might have noticed the similarities between the points brought forward by the Tipping Point and the 100th Monkey Effect. Kudos to Malcolm Gladwell for putting up examples to prove the point and kudos to the person who first tried to explain the social behavior of monkeys akin to how we humans might be socializing as well.

…and now it’s time to give this 100 monkeys experiment a go at proving the myth a reality
The beginnings of the 100th Monkey experiment.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/maynaschua/sets/72157616214426628/