Jason Zengerle profiles Malcolm Gladwell and reviews his new book:
For all of his pop sensibility, Gladwell sees himself as something of a fuddy-duddy. If, as Michael Kinsley once observed, Al Gore was an old person’s idea of a young person, then Gladwell is a young person’s idea of an old person’s idea of a young person. Beneath the crazy hair, the slobby-chic clothes, and the buzzword-filled vocabulary is an old-fashioned guy who grew up among Mennonites in rural Ontario, didn’t have a TV until he was 23, and still prefers to do most of his research at the NYU library. Google is something of a personal hobbyhorse: “Google is the answer to the problem we didn’t have. It doesn’t tell you what’s interesting or what’s important. There’s still more in the library than there is on Google.”
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/11/gladwellian/208744/
