Culture: Expanding the Boundaries

As stated by Ethan Zuckerman in his post "Innovating from constraint":

I think this point is a very important one for increasing the likelihood of a successful innovation. People tend to dislike change, but they will often accept changes if they are small changes. In creating social innovation, trying to get people to completely flip their lifestyle would probably only work in the short term, if it works at all. Instead, if the innovation is designed to implement small changes, people are more likely to accept them as it won't necessitate them to stray too far from their present habits. That being said, implementing many small changes would be similar to implementing one large change--the difference would largely be in the reception, and thus success, of the method of innovation. There is a similar analogy that I often hear in physics: if a problem is so large that it seems unlikely that you will be able to solve it, break it up into smaller pieces as the sum of those smaller pieces is equivalent to the larger problem.

As for this point's application towards a problem that I personally find interesting, I believe this game (Urgent Evoke) is a good example of it. People often encourage education by telling students to do things like "Study longer", "Study harder", and "Get motivated". Obviously these suggestions are usually ignored, but even the "If you don't want to study longer, study more effectively" philosophy often fails. I think the problem may be that the action of studying in itself isn't part of most students' lifestyles. Video games, on the other hand, are. This is why I mentioned Urgent Evoke: the creators took something already present in the lives of most students, and altered it to educate them and get them thinking as they play. Note that it is a small but highly effective change. I think by similar methods, education can be greatly changed in my community as well.