W8: Barabasi – The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule – the only other time I’d really considered this was one time when I read some article where Miranda Kerr described her diet as being 80 percent good foods, 20 percent treats. So I guess it’s safe to say Barabasi’s ideas of an 80/20 rule are a bit of a step up from that.

Linking the 80/20 rule and the power law together, I think it’s very true that in many cases, extraordinary powerful or big events are a result of or relative to smaller ones. I think it’s particularly true in an industrialised world that there are more things that are ordinary, which prop up the extraordinary.

If we think of a different ratio – the 99/1 – the occupy movement is an exact demonstration of this, and, in fact, is a protest against the reality that out of the working efforts made by 99 percent of the world’s people, 1 percent of the global population reaps the financial rewards.

But back to the idea of participation and power law in networked media, this site has a helpful explanation and diagram of the Power Laws of Participation.