"Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking explores a frustratingly inaccessible yet amazing and important phenomenon: the human subconscious. Malcolm Gladwell explains in the 254-page non-fiction book the powerful and important subconscious thought process. He explains how, although counter-intuitive, snap judgements can be more powerful than mountains of consciously-collected data and planning, and how they can change our thinking about entire situations, people, and ideas.

I had read an excerpt of Blink a while ago because it related to a musician I liked at the time, Kenna. Before that, when my mother read the book, she'd told me about Kenna. I'd proven the point Malcolm Gladwell makes in his story about Kenna: I didn't like the music at first, and neither did anyone else in market test groups, which prevented the artist from having the record company's confidence to be a success. However, continuing to prove Gladwell's point, when I listened to it after knowing more about the music and music in general (Kenna was similar to other artists I liked) I really enjoyed the music. I didn't read much more of Blink at that point, but after really enjoying Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I decided to give Blink another try.

Malcolm Gladwell greatest strength is his ability to tell stories about people, events, and phenomenons relating to his topic and connecting them. He does this brilliantly in the introduction, which is constantly referenced throughout the rest of the book. Gladwell tells the story of how the Metropolitan Museum of Art had acquired an expensive but exquisite statue, had run tests on it, and had believed it was real. That was until experts who had spent years looking at these statues all had an immediate, subconscious reaction that something about the statue just wasn't right. Gladwell's main point, that the subconscious can be extremely powerful despite being frustratingly uncontrollable, shines through from the beginning. The instant, subconscious reactions prevailed over huge amounts of research and tests: the statue was a fake.

Blink is about how powerful the behind-the-scenes subconscious is. Gladwell calls the subconscious first impression thin-slicing. " 'Thin-slicing' refers to the ability of our subconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience," Gladwell explains. He does a very good job of defining the ideas he refers to throughout his book.

Gladwell also defines the "locked door" as he tells the story of a tennis expert frustrated to the point of insomnia trying to understand why his subconscious was so powerful in predicting double faults. The expert knew when it worked, but not why or how. Gladwell explains why and how our subconscious manipulates our lives, and how we can manipulate our subconscious, even when we are not aware that we are controlling it. This sounds horribly complex. Gladwell tells the reader about an experiment called an Implicit Association Test, and one of the most popular forms of it that tests race bias. Because of society's imprints on our subconscious, test takers find that they often lean towards a preference towards whites, even if they themselves are not racists or are not white. Gladwell explains how test takers, including himself, both inadvertently and purposefully manipulated their subconscious by reading about inspiring black people just before the test, such as Martin Luther King Jr. or a black Olympian. Gladwell shows the subconscious is constantly changing and we can control it to an extent through experience, expertise, and a conscious effort to change.

However, what makes Gladwell's books so enjoyable for me are the stories he tells and how he connects them to not only complex concepts, but also to each other. He is constantly referencing stories about military war games, and how collecting massive amounts of information was inferior to the opposition's snap judgements, when talking about how an ER ward deals with patients complaining of chest pain by gleaning only the simplest, most crucial information. He connects the election of Warren Harding, who was elected almost purely because he looked like he should be a president, to the success story of a popular car salesmen who refuses to prejudge his customers like his colleagues do. Gladwell's explainations help strengthen and prove his points about just how amazing the subconcious is.

Of course, his writing is superb also. His writing is witty and uncluttered. He describes food tasters and experts with humor and charisma: "Heylmun and Civille don't just taste food. They think about food. They dream about food. Having lunch with them is like going cello shopping with Yo-Yo Ma, or dropping in on Giorgio Armani one morning as he is deciding what to wear." Although he speaks about complex and intellectually challenging topics, it rarely seems as though he's talking down to the reader. He seems like he's sharing something very interesting in a casual conversation. This is not saying his writing is too sloppy or informal; he manages to reach the balance between being too casual or too arrogant. Very rarely, he will explain things a bit too much or not make the concepts clear enough, but it's not hard to see why this book is a bestseller.

Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication on the Rights of Woman"

Writing has changed hugely since the 18th century, but you never really realise it until you read something from that time period. Mary Wollstonecraft is an excellent example of how brilliant ideas of that time are more difficult to understand today due to the writing being muddled with manners, pleasantries, and above-average word choice that you don't find in current writing that is much more accessible to readers from all walks of life.

Wollstonecraft definitely has a voice. The manners and humility that progressively faded were distracting to the reader today, who is used to essays typically making their points more confidently. However, because of the language of this essay it was difficult to gather exactly the point she was making, but the reader I believe generally garnered the gist of it, that women were not as inferior as society and influencial philosophers like Rousseau generally believed them to be. I think Wollstonecraft believed women had more intelligence and virtues, but centuries-long prejudice and oppression kept them from reaching their intellectual potential.

Wollstonecraft is brave and revolutionary for writing about women's rights in her time. Though perhaps her greatest contribution of this essay is not the valid points she makes, but the very fact that she was this immense intellect and philosopher writing a hugely influential essay.

"I wish to speak the simple language of truth, and rather to address the head than the heart," claimed Wollstonecraft. She does this with grace and intelligence, and it lends even more to her credibility as she successfully attempts to prove with reason that women are not as inferior as believed in 18th century society. Almost all of the essay is well-mannered and respectful, only occasionally pointing out what is truly preposterous in the opinions of her opponents.

I believe Wollstonecraft would be proud of women's rights and equality today, as her prediction of women being the "friend...of man" is much closer to reality than in the 18th century. Even more proud she would be, I'm sure, of her role in feminism thanks to this influential essay.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr

In "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Nicholas Carr contemplates within the first page of his seven-page essay how he and many of his intelligent acquaintances can't read more than a brief two or three page article. I was miffed by this irony and, just as ironically, lost enthusiasm and interest in the article quickly.

However, when I did manage to find interest in the article, it turned out to be a very well-written and interesting essay and I found myself agreeing with many of the points Carr made in his essay about fears and predictions of what the plethora of information available through the internet will do to the human brain.

Unfortunately, the essay seemed to me to be unable to connect the main ideas and make a really compelling argument. They had opinions more than facts and research, when I'm quite sure there would have been research on the subject.

Also, the essay presented a few too many ideas - I personally didn't really understand how the story about Frederick Winslow Taylor's system really related much to other concepts in the essay, for example the idea that the Internet wants us to be easily distracted, or that there is so much information, but none of it very thorough or deep. I found the latter concepts to be much more interesting and less out-of-place than the idea of system efficiency over individual feelings and talents.

The one element the system idea connected well with was the reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was an interesting comment on how it could happen that humans become machinelike due to technology, but I felt he should have written a separate essay on those ideas, and left this essay to propose how so much information and knowledge could actually make us only superficially intelligent.

Other than the essay being - again, ironically - a bit too much unrelated information, I thought it was interesting and well-written. The quotes were well chosen, and the stories and ideas were interesting. Carr seemed at times to be a bit insecure of his feelings on the matter, writing, "Maybe I'm a worrywort," but he shouldn't be. This well written essay sums up predictions and fears that everyone should think about: how much instant, superficial information is too much?