[UPDATE Nov 2011] I originally wrote this in 2006, and reading it now, in the era of ‘the 99% demonstrations, empirical evidence of rising inequalities in wealth distribution, it seems more relevant than ever. Although perhaps it’s no longer a reverse bell curve, but a reverse long tail

At least every month (and this has held true for the last 5 years…), I find myself talking about the the ‘reverse bell curve’ idea, but can never find or remember to root out the link to the Wired article where I originally saw the idea.

It’s a very brief article by Daniel Pink (here’s the link) on how current trends in, well, pretty much everything are pushing away to the ends of the distribution scale, rather than the expected centred, ‘normal’ distribution of the bell curve:

Although bell curve distribution is still considered normal, a surprising number of economic and social phenomena now seem to follow a different arc. Instead of being high in the center and low on the sides, this new distribution is low in the center and high on the sides. Call it the well curve…

So posh vs. sloth, with no middle ground? :-)

But this trend is everywhere – even more so since the article was written in 2003.

This trend is highly visible in, arguably:

• American political views
• Modern cinema (either huge blockbusters or ‘independents‘)
• Food retailing (whole foods vs. Walmart).

Even in games consoles – witness the ‘power’ of the xbox360 vs. the low spec (and different focus) of the nintendo revolution.

And one just has to look at the gulf between the production mechanisms of blogs vs. big publishing, to see a trend of ‘small vs. big’ with little middle ground.

Companies themselves are embracing (and creating?) this trend – Ikea owns Habitat (think Target for the UK), Audi and Skoda are both owned by the same company (VW).

And the customisation trend (e.g. Nike’s ‘customisable’ shoes) vs. mass retail.

This trend is a good one – look at the skew towards simplicity of software and web apps vs. the ‘big iron’ of the ’90s – again, there’s not much middle ground.

While consumer and tech trends are interesting, the reversing of the bell curve has more profound impact when you look at the disturbing reverse bell curves in distributions such as education quality (either high-end, or very poor), the disparities between religious/speech freedoms across the world.

I think the reverse bell curve can explain trends such as energy production (will we see home-specific solar vs. nuclear with little in between)?

Perhaps most poignantly the reverse bell curve explains the late 20th century changes in employment – look at Nike – they’re a collection of high-end experts (designers, supply chain etc.) and a massive outsourced production base – where’s the ‘middle’ in that organisation?

What are the implications for a society that used to depend on a large ‘middle’ for employment and economic prosperity?