由於剛交接server時，還是專題生，
那時候的專題生在實驗室都沒自己的電腦。
所以就在某台server上練習linux，
後來也把blog架在上面。

不過最近快要離開學校了，
該搬的東西都得搬一搬，
就在想要把這個blog搬到哪去，
第一個念頭是乾脆轉到blogspot去，這樣後端不用自己管理，也蠻方便的。

於是找到下面這個網站，
http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/

只要先把wordpress從dashboard export出來成xml檔，
再把export的xml檔上傳至上面那個網站，
它會自動幫轉成blogspot格式的xml檔，並下載至本地端。
接著再把blogspot格式的xml檔import至blogspot就大功告成了。
不用花到五分鐘。

大部分的資料都轉的還不錯，
post, comment, tag，category轉過去都大致正確。
只是tag跟category會結合成一類。
private的文章會變成publish。

比較麻煩的是，很多post排版都亂了。
我有四百多篇post，整理起來會起笑~
 

As we know, social problem is intricate so that in most circumstances we cannot accurately predict what will happen in human society if something changes or goes wrong. Many sociologists thought that we cannot unravel the mystery of social phenomena by the same way of explaining the physical world, because there is a great difference between people and a physical atom. In comparison with a physical atom, individual person has his/her own unique and elaborate personality, background, and experiences. Thus, it is difficult to understand how individual makes a decision in various situations, let alone to predict the collective behaviors in daily life of human beings. Nevertheless, the book The Social Atom seeks to persuade us that the social phenomena may not be as complicated as we thought before, if we study the pattern of self-organization as physics but not individual complexity. The author, Mark Buchanan, of this book is a physicist and science writer, and he was formerly the editor of Nature which is a scientifically acclaimed international journal of science. However, the book The Social Atom is sort of a popular science book, which is written in an easy to read non-academic style and assumes no prior knowledge of either physics or social science.

　　In the beginning of the book, Buchanan said that when people think about physics, they think about quantum theory, Newton’s three laws of motion, Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity, black holes and so on. However, physics has moved a way beyond that. Modern physics has also branched out into another topic of interest. Not only did physicists concern with the fundamental equations, but they were keen to know how organization can emerge by itself. For example, they studied why the same water molecules can turn to solid when they are put into the freezer, and why they can change into vapor when boiled. Another question physicist was inquisitive to understand is why the same carbon atoms make up both diamond and graphite. In short, the answer of above questions is that a new and totally different material can emerge just by putting the same atoms together in a different pattern. In other words, the vital key for us to understand is the pattern of self-organization but not atoms themselves. From the same point of view, Buchanan claims that social science is like physics, pattern matters more than individual. And the complex social outcomes can result from potentially simple rules of individual behavior. That means we can explain and even predict a wide variety of human behaviors by using the observations akin to physics. What is more, he creates a new term called “Social Physics” for this approach.

　　Buchanan then gives far-reaching examples to show that regardless of people thinking of ourselves as self-determined individuals making up their own mind, they usually behave instinctively and act strongly rely on others around us. One of interesting example is that when you observe carefully the crowd on the street, either those who are shopping or just flooding out of a stadium after a big baseball game, you may find some intangible structure of the crowd. In the first place, everyone goes in different directions so that the crowd movements look like somewhat chaotic. In the meantime, some people begin to follow another in an effort to avoid collisions, and they gradually form narrow streams of movement. In the streams everyone moves in the same direction and flows along with one another. Furthermore, as more people join such streams, there is a greater pull on others to join the flow. This kind of herding behavior is not intended or planned by anyone, but the emerging pattern, the pedestrian stream, is somehow improvisatory and self-organizing. The motivation of the individual is simple, following with others in order to readily avoid colliding with the rest of the crowd, but the outcome is a complex collective behavior pattern. The idea is that we human being, just as social atoms, work by simple rules in the most daily life situations. If we learn more similar patterns in our social life at different levels, we will be able to anticipate social phenomena accurately.

　　Another compelling example given by Buchanan in the book is the well-known neighborhood segregation model in social science. In the US, spatial separation of the races is a long-standing phenomenon; white people and black people are often living in different communities. Most people think intuitively the cause is racism. But Thomas Schelling, awarded the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, showed us racial segregation could be just another collective pattern similar with the streams in a crowd but not related to racism. In 1971, Schelling designed a board game with dimes and pennies which stand for two races of people. At first he premises that no one is racist, but they are reasonably tolerant of diversity and only move when they find themselves in a clear minority group within their neighborhood. More specifically, they follow a rule like “If fewer than 30% of my neighbors belong to my race, then I will move.” The simulation game starts with a well-integrated community, and two races of people are mixed together randomly. In each run, every individual checks their surrounding and decides to move or stay by using the simple rule. After a short time, every individual stops moving and keeps a stable status. They surprisingly end up dividing themselves into sharply segregated group livings, even though the outcome is not intended by any individual. It is very counterintuitive and the link between individual attitudes and collective outcome is not straightforward. Buchanan said: “This is the power of pattern over people, and you can easily get an outcome that absolutely no one desires or intended… Next time you see racial segregation you can’t conclude that is racial discrimination.”

　　The work of Schelling unveils the fact that micro-motives lead to surprising macro-behavior, and enlighten many scientific fields. Recently, several physicists, computer scientists and social scientists have used computer simulation models to study patterns by regarding people as social atoms and endowing them with simple rules to interact with each other. The works include simulating human trails, traffic jams, panic behavior of pedestrians, riot situations, market crushes and bubbles, and social epidemics. They show that the thought with respect to our human society has been changing. Human behavior could be often simpler than what we think; to understand the human world better, we need to think of patterns, not just people. At any rate, if you would like to understand this new trend in social science, the book The Social Atom is definitely the best book for your reference. 

Did you ever wonder about how social epidemics – craze, fad, or word of mouth – get started? Why is that some ideas, behaviors, or produces burst out to epidemics while others don’t? And what can we do purposely to begin and incite positive epidemics of our own? These are the kinds of questions that Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for the New Yorker, tries to answer in The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. The tipping point is the name given by epidemiology for the dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can totally change at once. The SARS (Sever Acute Respiratory Syndrome), for example, can have little or inconsiderable harm on human society for a long time without being an epidemic. But suddenly, once a threshold or a critical point is crossed in terms of the number of infected people, situation moves rapidly downward and gets much worse. Gladwell borrows the idea and maps it to similar patterns observed in numerous social and marketing phenomena. Moreover, he claims that the three rules of the essence – the Law of Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context – offer a way of making sense of epidemics and provide us the direction to reach the tipping point.

  　　The Law of Few is roughly comparable to the famous Pareto Principle, also called 80/20 rule, which means a few influential people can disproportionately incite social and behavioral epidemics. These key people usually have remarkable social skills and social contacts to effectively disseminate their information or ideas; Gladwell groups them into three types of personalities: Connector, Maven, and Salesman.

　　Connectors are individuals who know and contact lots of various people, and establish large social networks. They collect people/acquaintances like other people collect stamps, and maintain the “weak ties” across different communities. Furthermore, their influential social capital bringing different people together make our world smaller, which is also why the impetus can be carried around every corner of the world.

　　Another group of individuals are kind of professional shoppers; Maven is the name Gladwell makes for them. Mavens love to gather information no matter what market is – computers, electronics, clothes, desserts – that is why they can always find out where the cheapest or best bargain products exactly are. Indeed, they know well about all the state-of-the-art stuffs and have one first forever. In addition, they enjoy sharing what they have found with friends, and at most time people also are inclined to look for advice from them.

　　While Connectors are social glue and Mavens are data banks, Salesmen are opinion makers who are charming, enthusiastic, and convincing. Although Salesmen may not have knowledge as much as Mavens, their innate charisma, verbal or non-verbal social skill can zap magically persuasive signals leading people to do what they do or agree with what they believe. Once in a while even neither Salesmen nor we are aware of this powerful influence, but we just unconsciously copy their style and want to be more like them.

　　The epidemics of idea usually start with Maven, because they are faithful first adopters of the new stuffs. Next, Connectors get information from Mavens or the friends of Mavens occasionally, and distribute the idea over different communities or countries. Finally once the spread idea gains enough approval of Salesmen, the snowball starts rolling! Sometimes the epidemic process can be more complex, because a single person can serve multiple or all three roles. Although these three key personalities contribute much effort to idea contagion, it may not be able to reach the tipping point to incite a total change if the idea is not sticky enough to be retained by new recipients.

　　Therefore, the second premise Gladwell made about tipping point is The Stickiness Factor which relates to the content of the message. It means that the message should grab the listener’s attention, get stuck in their mind and move them into action. He also illustrates that little changes in the presentation or package of idea can have large effect on stickiness by giving the example of Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues.

　　The last ingredient of the social epidemics is The Power of Context. Gladwell first takes the well-known psychological study Prison Experiment, made by Stanford University in 1971, as an example to show how environment turns a good-natured college student into a crucial perpetrator. Then he presents the eminent Broken Window theory: “If a building with a few broken windows which are left unrepaired, passersby may consider that nobody cares about it and no one is in charge. Soon, a few more windows were damaged and finally the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street in front of it.” Finally he describes how New York City government based on the theory improved the subway environment by the crackdown on graffiti and fare-beating. And afterward it is dramatically yielding a big drop in crime rates of the whole New York City. The main idea which Gladwell wants to emphasize here is that epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places where they occur. Furthermore, a seemingly small detail may clue people how to behave.

　　The Tipping Point is a powerful and fascinating book that cuts across a variety of fields of interest ranging from marketing study cases to psychological and sociological experiments. Gladwell also provides far-reaching examples and compelling ideas within the book to support the three main principles he advocates: the Law of Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. Besides that, his excellent writing really makes it easier for readers to catch the points and be persuaded. A fly in the ointment I think of, however, is that the author cite a multitude of concepts and coalesce together to convince reader, but do not clarify rigorously the correlation between the three principles and the tipping point. Maybe the reason is that the social epidemics always start from a series of small events and influences, grow in an insensible way, and then lead to rapid change, but often stop quite sharply and frequently leaving no subsequent track of itself. For any sake, The Tipping Point undoubtedly gives a profound insight of the social epidemics and inspires me much.