Fads as a Paradigm of the Social Cycle
We don't follow fashion That would be a joke You know we're going to set them, set them So everyone can take note, take note -- Adam Ant and Marco Pirroni In his book Knowledge and Coordination , Daniel Klein distinguishes between mutual coordination and concatenate coordination. Mutual coordination is coordination which people intend: you and I plan to meet for lunch, or several con artists devise a scheme to defraud an elderly widow of her fortune. Concatenate coordination is coordination that is pleasing to an observer: one of Klein's examples is a room designed with a harmonious combination of colors, shapes, and so on. It is important to note that successful mutual coordination does not imply concatenate coordination. If the con artists pull off their scheme to defraud the widow, they will have achieved mutual coordinaiton that is not concatenate coordination. (I really cannot do this schema full justice here; I am just introducing it to make sense ...