The Long Tail and an Interview.

psfk has a short interview of Chris Anderson, author of „The Long Tail“ – a book which I am definitely goint to get.

Somehow I get the feeling that this is already part of Chris‘ promotion tour. Not that I blame him, in fact, I hope he will have a very good promotional campaign around his book. Because, as he says:

Many people have noted how ironic it would be if my book on niches becomes a hit. I can live with that 😉

What he writes about in his forthcoming book (at least from what I can guess from his blog) are quite fundamental things influencing our society these days and in the future.
His idea of the „long tail“ will be equally important as ideas such as the „tipping point“ or the „wisdom of the crowds„.

Yet, he describes a phenomenon which is, in a way, completely new to our civilisation, since it requires a certain technological and network infrastructure, that men didn’t have sofar.

This stands in contrast to the ideas of the other two book examples that came to my mind – those ideas were known of and relevant for some time, with the only distinction, that only now two writers of „The New Yorker“ had put down these psychological/sociological theories into everyday speak for the common hobby-intellectual (like myself).