How do ideas spread? Why do some ideas catch fire while others recede into obscurity? If you have ever had a great idea for a business or product, you may have wondered, anxiously or eagerly, if this idea will ever take off. Perhaps you have carefully considered the ideal ratio of originality, demand and presentation.
In his brilliant new book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” psychologist Daniel Kahneman begins to answer these questions by examining systems of the mind that drive our decisions. The chapter “The Associative Machine” proposes that both the individual mind and a network of many minds operate in complex, non-linear patterns. He writes:
“We no longer think of the mind as going through a sequence of conscious ideas, one at a time. In the current view of how associative memory works, a great deal happens at once. An idea that has been activated does not merely evoke one other idea. It activates many ideas, which in turn activate others. Furthermore, only a few of the activated ideas will register in consciousness; most of the work as associative thinking is silent, hidden from our conscious selves.”
In many ways, ideas appear have a life of their own because we ourselves are not fully aware of our own thought processes. However, recent work in information graphics has mapped user behavior on the web, and the results illustrate what Kahneman articulates as the associative machine. UX designer Manuel Lima recently gave a talk that traces how information graphics throughout the centuries have changed to reflect shifting perceptions about patterns of thought.
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