Occasionally, the issue has breached public consciousness: the high-profile case of Libby Zion, the 18-year-old college student who died after being treated by a fatigued intern and resident in 1984, is one instance.
Hamilton told mourners that Scott's death was not in vain because it has prompted what he called "a new consciousness" about police profiling and excessive force against blacks in North Charleston and across the country.
If you want to point to the moment when the analytics movement (if you will) entered the collective sports consciousness, Moneyball author Michael Lewis' profile of then-Houston Rockets forward Shane Battier, "The No-Stats All Star," is as good a dividing line as any.
Patients with disorders of consciousness like the ones profiled in the article are not near death.
One of the tamer entries is from a 54-year-old woman who employed a stream-of-consciousness style on her profile page: "older hippie chick missin' the '60s empty nester needing to get back where I belong.
This year is a chance for those who haven't hit the public's consciousness to boost their profiles by winning medals.
For any aspect of politics to decisively make it into the popular consciousness, at least some high-profile people beyond the usual suspects need to talk about it – particularly in an age when politicians are held in such low esteem.
While my own queer sibling considers marriage barely radical enough to scratch the surface of their consciousness, many of the couples profiled in Time felt that, without national marriage equality, their weddings would be a flat-out attack on the queer people they love.
The role of the fourth estate in solving crimes has taken on a new dimension in the last two years, as the genre entered the mainstream consciousness and contributed to high-profile legal developments in a handful of cases that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.
And then, of course, there's Samsung, whose train wreck of a phablet really cemented the potential threat of exploding devices in mainstream consciousness through a pair of high profile recalls and constant reminders from flight attendants.
