Metcalfe’s law

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
by Howard Rheingold
Published 24 Dec 2011

As we will see in later chapters, the driving factors of the mobile, context-sensitive, Internet-connected devices are Moore’s Law (computer chips gets cheaper as they grow more powerful), Metcalfe’s Law (the useful power of a network multiplies rapidly as the number of nodes in the network increases), and Reed’s Law (the power of a network, especially one that enhances social networks, multiplies even more rapidly as the number of different human groups that can use the network increases). Moore’s Law drove the PC industry and the cultural changes that resulted, Metcalfe’s Law drove the deployment of the Internet, and Reed’s Law will drive the growth of the mobile and pervasive Net.

…

I started thinking in terms of group-forming networks (GFNs). I saw that the value of a GFN grows even faster—much, much faster—than the networks where Metcalfe’s Law holds true. Reed’s Law shows that the value of the network grows proportionately not to the square of the users, but exponentially.84 That means you raise two to the power of the number of nodes instead of squaring the number of nodes. The value of two nodes is four under Met-calfe’s Law and Reed’s Law, but the value of ten nodes is one hundred (ten to the second power) under Metcalfe’s Law and 1,024 (two to the tenth power) under Reed’s Law—and the differential rates of growth climb the hockey stick curve from there.

…

Reed’s Law relating social networks and computer networks is the most recent in a series of fundamental discoveries about the driving forces of computers and networks. In the social sciences, prediction is necessarily fuzzy. In the economics of computer-mediated social networks, however, four key mathematical laws of growth have been derived by four astute inquirers: Sarnoff’s Law, Moore’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law, and Reed’s Law. Each law is about how value is affected by technological leverage. Sarnoff’s Law emerged from the advent of radio and television networks in the early twentieth century, in which a central source broadcasts from a small number of transmitting stations to a large number of receivers.

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy
by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson
Published 30 May 2016

Note, for example, that the result of the equation for Metcalfe’s Law cannot be negative. Any new user is as good as any other. This definition of network effects assumes that all growth is equally valuable and has a positive impact on other users. But the stories of Chatroulette, Friendster, and Myspace suggest otherwise. Most Network Effects Are Local Why is the traditional understanding of network effects wrong? Well, not every potential connection in a network is a relevant one. This may seem obvious, but inherent in the Metcalfe’s Law view of networks is the idea that all network effects are global—everyone values being able to connect with everyone else in the network.

…

Something has a network effect when the behavior of other users has a direct impact on the value that you will get out of the same service. The classic example of this kind of effect is a telephone network that gets more valuable to each individual user as more people join its network (see Figure 7.1). Metcalfe’s Law, named after one of the inventors of Ethernet, Robert Metcalfe, suggested that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users in a system (network value = n2). Figure 7.1. Network effects in a telephone network: Value grows as the number of connections increases.

…

As more users join a network, the number of possible unique connections within the network grows according to the function: (n2 – n)/2, where n represents the number of users. As the number of possible connections gets very large, this mathematical function approaches a limit of n2, hence the mathematical definition of Metcalfe’s Law. Platforms have a similar dynamic. The more people there are on one side of the network, the more valuable the platform is to the other side. For example, the more app developers there are making apps for Apple’s iOS platform, the more valuable the platform is to consumers. This relationship goes both ways, so that the more consumers there are on a platform, the more valuable that platform is to producers (the app developers).

The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy
by Matthew Hindman
Published 24 Sep 2018

Second, there is the persistent misuse of “Metcalfe’s Law,” a rule of thumb—and definitely not a real law—named after ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe. As popularly understood, Metcalfe’s Law claims that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of connected users. A network that connected a hundred users, for example, would be a hundred times more valuable than than a network that connected ten. The endorsement of Metcalfe’s Law has been repeated at the highest levels of public policy. Reed Hundt, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, declared that Metcalfe’s Law, along with Moore’s Law, “give us the best foundation for understanding the Internet.”7 Despite this, there has never been evidence for Metcalfe’s Law in large real-world networks, and it has been regularly debunked for two decades.8 Metcalfe’s assumption that all ties are equally valuable is not true in a social context.

…

Reed Hundt, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, declared that Metcalfe’s Law, along with Moore’s Law, “give us the best foundation for understanding the Internet.”7 Despite this, there has never been evidence for Metcalfe’s Law in large real-world networks, and it has been regularly debunked for two decades.8 Metcalfe’s assumption that all ties are equally valuable is not true in a social context. People care more about talking to their family and friends and business associates than they do about talking to distant strangers. But even if network effects have been overstated, sites and apps with a strong social component show remarkable stickiness. As of this writing, Facebook is the most popular site on the web, and it owns the two most popular apps (Facebook and Facebook Messenger) on both iOS and Android.

…

Retrieved from http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk /wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2017/07/Troops-Trolls-and-Troublemakers.pdf. Brian, M. (2014, June). Google’s new “material design” UI coming to Android, Chrome OS and the web. Engadget. Retrieved from https://www.engadget.com/2014 /06/25/googles-new-design-language-is-called-material-design/. Briscoe, B., Odlyzko, A., and Tilly, B. (2006). Metcalfe’s Law is wrong: communications networks increase in value as they add members, but by how much? IEEE Spectrum, 43(7), 34–39. Brodersen, K. H., Gallusser, F., Koehler, J., Remy, N., Scott, S. L., et al. (2015). Inferring causal impact using Bayesian structural time-series models. The Annals of Applied Statistics, 9(1), 247–74.

How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs
by Tim Draper
Published 18 Dec 2017

The ADHD drug Adderall was approved for attention deficit disorder by the FDA in 1996 and started to be used as a study aid to help students focus. I wonder if the two are related. Bitcoin Price Here is a chart of Bitcoin market value and the number of Bitcoin wallets. What does it tell you? Is the price of Bitcoin related to the square of the number of wallets? Could this be an example of Metcalfe’s Law (see below for an explanation of Metcalfe’s Law)? Life Expectancy People continue to live longer lives. If the trend continues, what will the people of Earth look like in 100 years? What happens to the population? Its size? Its makeup? Trends matter. Try to read trends. Go find charts on your own industry.

…

Bitcoin is nothing if no one uses it or values it (as is true with any currency), but as more people adopt Bitcoin as a way of transmitting funds, the more people recognize its value and its value rises. Metcalfe’s Law states that the value of a communications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n^2). The value increases exponentially according to the number of nodes in the network. Metcalfe’s Law The math works this way: The value of the network (relationships) = sum of all numerals from 1 to N-1, where N is the number of nodes. The simplified equation looks like this: If R is relationships, and N is the number of nodes, let’s make X = N-1 to simplify the equation.

…

Companies in the network include Right-Click Capital in Australia, Dalus Capital in Mexico, Wavemaker in Singapore and South East Asia, Blume Ventures in India, as well as the various Draper branded funds: Draper Dragon in China, Draper Athena in Korea, Draper Nexus in Japan, Draper Esprit in the UK, Draper Triangle in the Midwestern US, Draper Aurora in Russia, and Draper Associates in Silicon Valley as well as three smaller firms in our DVN beta program, and we are adding more partners every year. A network provides network effects. More nodes on a network increase the power of the network as the square of the number of nodes on the network increases. This concept is known as Metcalfe’s Law, after entrepreneur, venture capitalist, educator and pundit Bob Metcalfe. The DVN allows me to evaluate and potentially fund any company from anywhere in the world. My deal flow has also expanded and improved. My judgment can only have been improved by seeing more companies from more regions, and Draper Associates’ returns should continue to improve because we see so many more companies for each one I invest in.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
by Clay Shirky
Published 28 Feb 2008

With ten people, there are forty-five pairs (Metcalfe’s Law), but a thousand possible subgroups (Reed’s Law). Reed’s Law also relies on the potential of communication; the vast majority of possible subgroups will never actually form. The number of potential million-person networks that could theoretically exist on the internet beggars description, but almost none of them actually will, because there’s not much a million-person network could do. Most of the action in Reed’s Law comes from the formation to human-scale groups—dozens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, rather than millions or billions. As with Metcalfe’s Law, the growth of the networked population increases the number of potential groups, but the value from Reed’s Law grows much faster than Metcalfe’s Law, because there are many more potential groups than potential pairs.

…

(As always, Wikipedia also contains links at the bottom of the article to additional materials on the subject.) An alternate formulation of the same math is expressed as “Metcalfe’s law.” Robert Metcalfe, inventor of a core networking technology called Ethernet, proposed that “the value of a network rises with the square of its members,” which is to say that when you double the size of a network, its value quadruples, because so many new links become possible. Metcalfe’s law isn’t true in any literal sense, because not all links are created equal—being able to contact your friends matters more than being able to contact someone you’ve never heard of who lives on the other side of the world.

…

This increase in scale, both of the underlying social media and of the population that uses it, is still creating surprises because large systems behave differently from small ones. One fitting name for the way more is different is “the network effect,” the name given to networks that become more valuable as people adopt them. Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of the Ethernet networking protocol, gave his name to a law that describes this increase in value. Metcalfe’s Law is usually stated this way: “The value of the network grows with the square of its users.” When you double the size of the network, you quadruple the number of potential connections. This is Birthday Paradox math, recast as a source of value instead of cost. Being the only person in the world who can send e-mail isn’t a terribly exciting proposition, but once you can send e-mail, every new user means there’s someone new you can trade messages with.

The Globotics Upheaval: Globalisation, Robotics and the Future of Work
by Richard Baldwin
Published 10 Jan 2019

At the current growth rate of about 10 percent per year, over a billion more people will be online by the time the US election rolls around in 2020. By the 2024 election, almost every human will be online. The combination of fast data processing and fast transmission has produced some absolutely enormous digital networks, like Facebook with its two billion users. There is a very good reason for this—it’s called Metcalf’s law. Metcalf’s Law Robert Metcalf—the third and least colorful of the digital lawmakers—observed that being connected to a network gets more valuable as the network grows, even as the cost of joining falls. This not only helps explain why digital networks grow so fast, it also explains the winner-take-all outcomes we see with online competition among networks.

…

Moore’s law, which is one of these special names, states that computer processing speeds grow exponentially, doubling every 18 months or so. There are three other “Laws” that explain the unusual nature of digital technology. The one about the growth in data transmission is called Gilder’s law, the one about the growth in the usefulness of digital networks is called Metcalf’s law, and the one that explains the insane pace of innovation is called Varian’s law. The people behind the laws are as interesting as the laws themselves. Moore’s Law Gordon Moore’s career is, in a strange way, an analogy for how his law works. He started slow but went on to do amazing things. An indifferent student in high school, he spent two years in the unglamorous San Jose State University before transferring to the big leagues at University of California—Berkeley and becoming the first member of his family to graduate from university.

…

This not only helps explain why digital networks grow so fast, it also explains the winner-take-all outcomes we see with online competition among networks. The law is really just common sense. It is pretty obvious that networks are more useful, and useful more often, when they link-up more people, more computers, and more information. But the simple trend—more links means more useful—is not where the insight lies. Metcalfe’s law states the value of a network grows faster than the number of people connected to it. And not just a little bit faster, it grows twice as fast. When the number of network users is, say, 100,000, the number of possible new connections created by adding one more user is 100,000. When there are 200,000 users, adding one more creates 200,000 new connections.

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
by Sebastian Mallaby
Published 1 Feb 2022

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 69 Doerr commented, “Metcalfe taught me about Metcalfe’s law, and I could see that the value of a network would grow with the square of the number of users. So Netscape could be huge.” He added, “These tsunami-like waves of innovation come about every thirteen years or so, each driven by a power law. The PC around 1980–81; the internet in 1994; mobility and cloud in 2007. The next is AI.” Doerr, interview by the author, Sept. 13, 2018. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 70 For a lucid analysis of the relationship between Metcalfe’s law and Moore’s law, see Bob Metcalfe, “Metcalfe’s Law Recurses Down the Long Tail of Social Networks,” VC Mike’s Blog, Aug. 18, 2006, vcmike.wordpress.com/2006/08/18/metcalfe-social-networks.

…

At the moment when Doerr met Clark, the number of internet users was about to triple over the next two years, meaning that the value of the network would jump ninefold, an effect massively more powerful than the mere doubling in the power of semiconductors over that same period. What’s more, Metcalfe’s law was not supplanting Moore’s law, which would have been dramatic enough. Rather, it was compounding it. The explosion of internet traffic would be fueled both by its rapid growth in usefulness (Metcalfe’s law) and by the falling cost of modems and computers (Moore’s law).[71] After listening to Clark’s pitch, Doerr was determined to invest. A magical browser that attracted millions to the internet had almost limitless potential.

…

That had worked out pretty well for him.[31] The meeting in Los Altos went off well. Krause, like Metcalfe, was a competitive tennis player, and the two men had a meeting of the minds on the future of computing. The utility of a personal computer would rise exponentially when it was hooked up to a network, they both agreed. Indeed, this insight came to be known as Metcalfe’s law: the value of a network rises with the square of the number of devices connected to it. A few days later, Krause met Howard Charney, Metcalfe’s chief lieutenant, as well as the other early employees. The more he got to know 3Com, the more he grew enthusiastic. If he quit Hewlett-Packard, he would be leaving a stable company and taking a pay cut.

Clock of the Long Now
by Stewart Brand
Published 1 Jan 1999

There were “Moore’s Laws” of doubling capacity in digital storage, in communications bandwidth, and in the ubiquity of microprocessors in everything from dolls and doorknobs to hearing aids. New machines became obsolete every three years. The proliferation of personal computers and the digitizing of communications via the Internet set off what came to be called Metcalfe’s Law, named after Xerox engineer Bob Metcalfe. It states that the power of a network grows as the square of the number of users (people or devices) on the net. Hence the explosion of the World Wide Web in the mid 1990s, when the Net’s total content was doubling every one hundred days. Related technologies such as biotech also took off.

…

Double the number of people and you get approximately quadruple the value: with 20 people, each has 19 others as resources; total value 380. Ten times the number of people, 100 times the value: with 100 people, each has 99 resources; total value 9,900. A thousand times the people, a million times the value. What was the value of the Internet in 1998, when it had some 50 million people on it? Metcalfe’s Law explains why 50 million people had to get on the Internet in just a few years. The aggregate value of other users was so great that they could not afford to miss the boat. With technological acceleration driving economic acceleration, politics and culture can only struggle to keep up. Armed conflict changes.

…

Lying is far more flagrant on the Net, but no one can make it stick, because anyone can challenge the lie directly and make their case with multiple links to corroborating sources. One such man, Ken McVay, undermined all the online Holocaust-denying discussion groups in this fashion, connecting them to a linked distributed archive of documentation proving that the Holocaust indeed took place. Metcalfe’s Law of exponential growth of the Net is proving to be even more significant than Moore’s Law of exponential growth of microchip capability. The chip is an individual’s tool; the Net is society’s tool. It may even become its own tool. As the science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge has suggested, the Net is supplied with so much computer power and is gaining so much massively parallel amplification of that power by its burgeoning connectivity that it might one day “wake up.”

The Scandal of Money
by George Gilder
Published 23 Feb 2016

Moore’s Law has become an important principle of INFORMATION THEORY. Metcalfe’s Law: The value and power of a network grows by the square of the number of compatible nodes it links. Named for the engineer Robert Metcalfe, a co-inventor of Ethernet, this law is a rough index and deeply counterintuitive. (It would be preposterous to claim that the Internet is worth the square of its six billion connected devices.) But the law applies to smaller networks, and it explains the vectors of value creation of companies such as Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon, which now dominate stock market capitalization. Metcalfe’s Law may well apply to the promise of new digital currencies and ultimately assure the success of a new transactions layer for the Internet software stack.

…

This understanding of economic growth follows from Karl Popper’s insight that a scientific proposition must be framed in terms that are falsifiable or refutable. Government guarantees prevent learning and thus thwart economic growth. All expanding businesses and industries follow a learning curve that ordains a 20 to 30 percent decrease in costs with every doubling of total units sold. Classical learning curves are MOORE’S LAW in SILICON VALLEY and METCALFE’S LAW in networking. Raymond Kurzweil generalized the concept as a “law of accelerating returns.” Moore’s Law: Cost-effectiveness in the computer industry doubles every two years. This pace corresponds closely to a faster pace in the number of transistors produced, signifying a learning curve. Formulated by Intel founder Gordon Moore and inspired by Caltech professor Carver Mead’s research, Moore’s Law was originally based on the biennial doubling of the density of transistors on a silicon chip.

…

Keynes and the Reshaping of the Global Economy (New York, NY: Pegasus Books, 2015), epilogue. 4.Maurice McTigue, “Rolling Back Government, Lessons from New Zealand,” Hillsdale College Imprimis 33, no. 4 (April 2004). 5.George Gilder, The Israel Test: Why the World’s Most Besieged State Is a Beacon of Freedom and Hope for the World Economy (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2012). 6.Steve Forbes with Elizabeth Ames, Reviving America: How Repealing Obamacare, Replacing the Tax Code, and Reforming the Fed will Restore Hope and Prosperity (New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education, 2016), 124 and passim. 7.Metcalfe’s Law ordains that the power and value of a network rises roughly by the square of the number of compatible devices linked to it. 8.Judy Shelton, Fixing the Dollar Now: Why U.S. Money Lost Its Integrity and How We Can Restore It (Washington, DC: Atlas Economic Research Foundation, 2011). 9.Ibid., 40–44. 10.Ibid., 48, citing Alan Greenspan, “Can the U.S.

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
by Roger McNamee
Published 1 Jan 2019

Moore’s Law, coined by a cofounder of Intel, stated that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every year. It was later revised to a more useful formulation: the performance of an integrated circuit doubles every eighteen to twenty-four months. Metcalfe’s Law, named for a founder of 3Com, said that the value of any network would increase as the square of the number of nodes. Bigger networks are geometrically more valuable than small ones. Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law reinforced each other. As the price of computers fell, the benefits of connecting them rose. It took fifty years, but we eventually connected every computer. The result was the internet we know today, a global network that connects billions of devices and made Facebook and all other internet platforms possible.

…

Licklider conceived the network that would become the internet, and he persuaded the government to finance its development. At the same time, Douglas Engelbart invented the field of human-computer interaction, which led to him to create the first computer mouse and to conceive the first graphical interface. It would take nearly two decades before Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law could deliver enough performance to enable their vision of personal computing and an additional decade before the internet took off. Beginning in the seventies, the focus of the tech industry began to shift toward the needs of business. The era began with a concept called time sharing, which enabled many users to share the use of a single computer, reducing the cost to everyone.

…

For consumers, PCs were relatively expensive and hard to use, but millions bought and learned to operate them. They put up with character-mode interfaces until Macintosh and then Windows finally delivered graphical interfaces that did not, well, totally suck. In the early nineties, consumer-centric PCs optimized for video games came to market. The virtuous cycle of Moore’s Law for computers and Metcalfe’s Law for networks reached a new level in the late eighties, but the open internet did not take off right away. It required enhancements. The English researcher Tim Berners-Lee delivered the goods when he invented the World Wide Web in 1989 and the first web browser in 1991, but even those innovations were not enough to push the internet into the mainstream.

The Flat White Economy
by Douglas McWilliams
Published 15 Feb 2015

And as the value of each phone increases, the more phones tend to become available to contact on the network, until there are so many other connections that the value of an additional connection is negligible. Network effects were first developed as a concept by the President of Bell Telephones in making his case for a monopoly in 1908, but the ideas were developed and refined in the 1980s and 1990s. Robert Metcalfe, one of the co-inventors of the Ethernet, was the progenitor of Metcalfe’s Law – that the value of a communications network varied with the square of the number of connections in the network. This idea was vigorously promoted by the economic guru George Gilder2 during the 1990s. Where there are network effects, investment typically doesn’t take place until there is a critical mass of potential users.

…

If you add taxes and subtract subsidies from the GVA data you get the GDP for the region. 6 www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/bus-register/business-register-employment-survey/2013-provisional/info-jobs-growth-by-region-and-industry.html CHAPTER TWO 1. ‘The Economics of Information’, George J Stigler, Chicago University Journal of Political Economy, June 1961, pp213–225. 2. Originally published as ‘Metcalfe’s Law and Legacy’, Forbes ASAP, September 1993, and developed in Telecosm, George Gilder, Simon & Schuster, 1996. 3. I first presented these arguments with some accompanying detail to the IBM Computer Users Association in May 1989 – they have changed remarkably little in the past 25 years! 4. ‘The Economic Impact of Cloud Computing: a Cebr report for EMC2’, Cebr, December 2010. 5.

…

article=1021&context=confpapers INDEX Accenture Fintech Innovation Lab ref1 accommodation ref1, ref2, ref3 cheap ref1, ref2, ref3 cramped ref1 displacement of ref1 proximity to amenities ref1 Advanced Card Systems ref1 advertising/marketing ref1, ref2 campaigns ref1 digital ref1 investment in ref1 online ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 role of creativity in ref1 Aerob ref1 AirWatch ref1 Alibaba ref1, ref2 floated on NYSE ref1 Allegra Strategies ref1 Allford, Simon ref1 Allford Hall Monaghan Morris ref1 Amazon.com, Inc. ref1, ref2, ref3 Apple, Inc. ref1, ref2, ref3 development kits ref1 facilities of ref1 product lines of ref1 Argentina Buenos Aires share of GDP ref1 Association of London Councils ref1 AT&T Inc. ref1 Australia ref1 Sydney ref1 Austria Vienna share of GDP ref1 Bangladesh economy of ref1 Dhaka ref1 Bank of England investment guidelines ref1 BASF SE ref1 Bell Telephones personnel of ref1 Bennet, Natalie leader of Green Party ref1 bicycles ref1 fatalities associated with ref1 sales of ref1 use in commuting ref1 big data ref1 Birmingham Science Park Aston Innovation Birmingham Complex ref1 Bold Rocket ref1 bonuses ref1 use in property market ref1 Boston Consulting Group ref1, ref2 British Bars and Pubs Association ref1 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) BBC Scotland ref1 Brough, Graham ref1 Brown, Gordon ref1, ref2 Burkina Faso Ouagadougou ref1 Burt, Prof Ronald ref1, ref2 Cable and Wireless assets of ref1 Cameron, David economic policies of ref1, ref2 immigration policies of ref1 Canada ref1 Montreal ref1 Toronto ref1, ref2 Vancouver ref1 capital rate of return ref1, ref2 capitalism ref1, ref2, ref3 profits ref1 Catholicism ref1 Centre for Cities ref1, ref2 Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 estimates of UK economic growth ref1 offices of ref1 personnel of ref1, ref2 Centre for Retail Research ref1, ref2 champagne sales figures ref1, ref2 Channel 4 ref1 China Beijing ref1, ref2, ref3 Haidian district ref1 economy of ref1 Golden Shield firewall (Great Firewall of China) ref1 government of ref1, ref2, ref3 Hong Kong ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Cyberport ref1 Hong Kong Stock Exchange ref1 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ref1, ref2 special economic zones Hangzhou ref1 Shenzhen ref1 Zhongguancun Innovation Way (Z-innoway) ref1 China Mobile ref1 China Telecom ref1 China Unicom ref1 Cisco Systems facilities of ref1 cloud computing ref1, ref2 Coalition Government immigration policy of ref1, ref2 coffee shops culture of ref1 cyber cafes ref1 growth of market ref1 Commonwealth migration from ref1 Companies House ref1 Confederation of British Industry (CBI) ref1, ref2 personnel of ref1 Confucianism ref1 Conservative Party ref1 Cooper, Wayne ref1 Corporation of London ref1, ref2, ref3 Crafts, Nick ref1 creative economy ref1 Cridland, John leader of CBI ref1 Cromwell, Oliver ref1 Crow, Bob ref1 Daily Mail ref1 Danone ref1 Danticat, Edwidge ref1 Davis, Charles ref1 Decoded ref1 Deloitte ref1 deregulation of financial markets (1986) ref1 digital economy ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 emergence of ref1, ref2 role of creativity in ref1 Dorling, Danny ref1 Dunne, Ronan CEO of O2 (UK) ref1 Durden, Tyler ref1 Economic Journal, The ref1, ref2 Economist, The ref1, ref2, ref3 Edinburgh University ref1 Eggers, Dave Circle, The (2013) ref1 Egypt Cairo ref1 share of GDP ref1 employment ref1 growth ref1 immigrant labour ref1 in FWE ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 job creation ref1 low-skilled jobs ref1 public sector 1112 science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) ref1 growth of ref1 shortages ref1 end user demand ref1 Engels, Friedrich ref1 Entrepreneurs for the Future (E4F) ref1 entrepreneurship ref1, ref2, ref3 e.Republic Center for Digital Government and Digital Communities Digital Cities award programme ref1, ref2 Esquire (magazine) ref1 European Economic Area (EEA) ref1 migrants from ref1 contribution to fiscal system ref1 migrants from outside ref1 contribution to fiscal system ref1 European Union (EU) free movement of labour in ref1 member states of ref1, ref2, ref3 taxation regulations ref1 Eurostar ref1 Eurozone ref1, ref2 Crisis (2009–) ref1, ref2, ref3 economy ref1 Facebook ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 IPO of ref1 Falmouth University ref1 Fan, Donald Senior Director for Office for Diversity of Walmart ref1 FanDuel ref1 Farage, Nigel leader of UKIP ref1 feudalism ref1 financial services ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 lifestyles associated with ref1, ref2 Financial Times (FT) ref1 FT Global Top 500 Companies ref1 Fintech ref1 First World War (1914–18) ref1 fiscal transfer ref1, ref2, ref3 net ref1 potential use to cover local deficits ref1 Flat White Economy (FWE) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17 advantages of immigration for ref1, ref2, ref3 business model for ref1 development and growth of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 employment in ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 shortages ref1 impact on UK economy ref1, ref2 model of ref1, ref2, ref3 replicating ref1-ref2 role of creativity in ref1 startups in ref1 business model ref1 Flat Whiters ref1 accommodation data for ref1 social culture of ref1 fashion ref1 nightlife ref1 transport ref1 technology used by ref1 Forbes (magazine) ref1 France ref1 education system of ref1 Paris ref1, ref2, ref3 share of GDP ref1 Paris-Sarclay ref1 creation of (2006) ref1 potential limitations of ref1 promotion of ICT in ref1 Forst and Sullivan ref1 France ref1, ref2 Freeman, Prof Christopher ref1 Fujitsu Ltd. ref1 Funding Circle ref1 Gates, Bill ref1 Germany ref1, ref2, ref3 Berlin ref1 economy of ref1 Glaeser, Edward ref1 Triumph of the City, The ref1 Global Financial Crisis (2007–9) ref1, ref2 Banking Crises (2008) ref1 impact on migration ref1 UK recession (2008–9) ref1 Global Innovation Index ref1 globalisation ref1, ref2, ref3 Glyn, Andrew ref1 Goodison, Sir Nicholas Chairman of the Stock Exchange ref1 Google, Inc. ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 acquisitions made by ref1 development kits ref1 offices of ref1, ref2 Greater London Authority (GLA) ref1, ref2 Green Party members of ref1 Gröningen Growth and Development Centre ref1 Guardian, The ref1, ref2, ref3 Harbron, Rob ref1, ref2 Harrison, Andy Chief Executive of Whitbread ref1 Harvard Business School ref1 Harvard University Harvard Lab for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis ref1 HCL Technologies ref1 Heisnberg, Werner uncertainty principle ref1 Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) ref1 Huawei Technologies ref1 immigration ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 advantages for FWE ref1, ref2, ref3 economic impact of ref1, ref2 impact on social cohesion ref1 impact on wages ref1 legislation ref1 access to state benefits ref1 quota systems ref1 non-EEA ref1, ref2 restrictions on ref1, ref2, ref3 Imperial College, London facilities of ref1 India ref1, ref2 Calcutta ref1 IT sector of ref1 Karnataka ref1 Bangalore ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Electronics City ref1 Mumbai ref1 inequality ref1 potential role of London in ref1, ref2 sources of wealth ref1 Infosys Ltd ref1 initial public offering (IPOs) ref1 innovation ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 hubs ref1, ref2 independent ref1 investments in ref1 projects ref1 Institute for Public Policy Research ref1 intellectual property protection of ref1, ref2 Intel Corporation ref1, ref2, ref3 facilities of ref1 personnel of ref1 International Business Machines (IBM) ref1, ref2 facilities of ref1, ref2, ref3 personnel of ref1, ref2, ref3 internet usage ref1 investment ref1, ref2, ref3 advertising and marketing ref1 capitalising of ref1 in innovation ref1 process of ref1 Israel ref1, ref2 Defence Ministry ref1 Haifa ref1 tech sector of ref1 IT spending ref1, ref2 accounting for ref1 software ref1 Italy ref1 Frascati ref1 Rome ref1 ITC Infotech India Ltd ref1 Japan ref1 economy of ref1 Tokyo ref1 share of GDP ref1 Johnson, Boris Mayor of London ref1, ref2, ref3 Johnson Press plc ref1 Judaism ref1 Kaldor, Nicholas ref1 Keynes, John Maynard ref1 Economic Consequences of the Peace, The ref1 KPMG ref1 labour ref1 division of ref1 immigrant ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 market ref1 shocks ref1 share of income ref1, ref2 supply of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Labour Party ref1 immigration policies of ref1 Lai, Ian ref1 Laserfiche ref1 Lawson, Nigel ref1 Leeds Beckett University ref1 Level 39 ref1 Liberal Democrats immigration policies of ref1 lifestyles ref1 associated with financial services ref1 Livingstone, Ken ref1 Lloyds ref1 London School of Economics (LSE) ref1 MadRat games ref1 MagnetWorks Engineering ref1 Mahindra Satyam ref1 Mainelli, Michael Gresham Professor of Commerce ref1 Malaysia ref1 Kuala Lumpur ref1 Manchester Science Parks (MSP) ref1 market capitalisation ref1, ref2 market economy ref1 Marx, Karl ref1, ref2 Labour Theory of Value ref1 Marxism ref1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ref1 campuses of ref1 Technology Review ref1, ref2 MasterCard ref1 McAfee, Inc. ref1 McKinsey Global Institute ref1 McQueen, Alexander ref1 McWilliams, Sir Francis ref1 Pray Silence for Jock Whittington (2002) ref1 Medvedev, Dmitry ref1 technology policies of ref1 Metcalfe, Robert ref1 Metcalfe’s Law concept of ref1 Mexico ref1 Mexico City ref1 share of GDP ref1 Microsoft Corporation ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 facilities of ref1 Future Decoded conference ref1 personnel of ref1 Windows (operating system) ref1 Migration Advisory Committee ref1 Miliband, Ed immigration policies of ref1 MindCandy ref1 Moshi Monsters ref1 offices of ref1 Mitsui Chemicals ref1 Mohan, Mukund CEO of Microsoft Ventures in India ref1 Mongolia Ulan Bator ref1 Moore, Gordon Earle Moore’s Law ref1 MphasiS ref1 National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) ref1, ref2 Netherlands Amsterdam ref1 network effects ref1 relationship with supereconomies of scale ref1 Network Rail offices of ref1 New Scientist ref1 New Statesman ref1 Nitto Denko ref1 Nokia Oyj ref1 O2 (Telefónica UK Limited) ref1 offices of ref1 personnel of ref1 Office of Communications (Ofcom) ref1 Olympic Games (2012) ref1, ref2 online shopping ref1, ref2 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Osborne, George ref1 Outblaze ref1 Pareto Principle concept of ref1 Passenger Demand Forecasting Council ref1 PayPal ref1 PCCW ref1 Poland accession to EU (2004) ref1 Pollock, Erskine ref1 Procter & Gamble Co. ref1 property markets ref1, ref2 commercial ref1, ref2 housebuilding ref1, ref2 house/property prices ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 property crisis (2007) ref1 residential ref1 use of bonuses in ref1 public spending ref1, ref2, ref3 Barnett formula ref1 relationship with taxation ref1 Qualcomm facilities of ref1 Reinartz, Werner ref1 Republic of Ireland ref1 research and development (R&D) ref1, ref2, ref3 definitions of ref1, ref2 expenditure ref1, ref2 hubs ref1, ref2 industrial ref1 Research Council for the Arts and Humanities ‘Diasporas, Migration and Identities’ ref1 Rogers, Everett Diffusion of Innovations (1962) ref1 Russian Federation ref1 economy of ref1 Defence Ministry ref1 Moscow ref1, ref2 Skolkovo Innovation Centre ref1, ref2 Saffert, Peter ref1 sales and advertising ref1 Sarkozy, Nicolas technology policies of ref1 Scottish Media Group (STV) ref1 Second World War (1939–45) Blitz, The (1940–1) ref1 shared accommodation ref1 Silicon Canal ref1 Silicon Roundabout ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Silicon Valley ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 role of US government defence spending in development of ref1 social culture of ref1 Silva, Rohan Senior Policy Advisor to David Cameron ref1 Singapore ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 government of ref1 Research, Innovation and Enterprise Plan (RIE 2015) ref1 research centres of ref1 A*Star Biopolis ref1 Fusionopolis ref1 Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (Create) ref1 CleanTech Park ref1 Singapore Science Park ref1 Tuas Biomedical Park ref1 skills drain ref1 Skyscanner ref1 small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) ref1 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) ref1 Small Business Service Household Survey of Entrepreneurship ref1 Smith, Adam Wealth of Nations, The ref1 Smith, Michael Acton founder of MindCandy ref1 Social Democratic Party (SDP) formation of (1981) ref1 social media ref1 restrictions on ref1 Solow, Robert ref1 South Africa Johannesburg share of GDP ref1 South East Regional Assembly ref1 South Korea Seoul ref1 share of GDP ref1 Spain Barcelona ref1 Ibiza ref1 Sprint Corporation ref1 startups ref1 business models of ref1 in FWE ref1 Stigler, George ref1 supereconomies of scale concept of ref1 relationship with network effects ref1 Sweden Stockholm share of GDP ref1 Tata Consultancy Services ref1 taxation ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 allowance ref1 corporation ref1 EU regulations ref1 National Insurance ref1, ref2, ref3 regional variation of ref1 relationship with public spending ref1 Tech City ref1, ref2, ref3 technology clusters ref1, ref2, ref3 identification of ref1 Techstars/Barclays ref1 telecommunications ref1 Thatcher, Margaret ref1, ref2 Thile, Peter ref1 trade unions ref1 Transport for London (TfL) ref1, ref2 UK Independence Party (UKIP) members of ref1, ref2 United Kingdom (UK) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 Bath ref1 Birmingham ref1, ref2 Bristol ref1 Cambridge ref1 Cheshire ref1 Civil Service ref1 Department for Business, Innovation and Skills ref1, ref2 Department for Transport ref1 economy of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 contribution of creative industries to ref1 growth of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Edinburgh ref1 GDP per capita ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Glasgow ref1, ref2 media clusters in ref1 government of ref1, ref2, ref3 Index of Multiple Deprivation ref1 ‘Innovation Report 2014’ ref1 Hounslow ref1 labour market of ref1 Leeds ref1, ref2, ref3 London ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23 business sector of ref1 Camden ref1, ref2 City Fringes ref1, ref2 City of London ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 cultural presence of ref1 economy of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 migrant labour in ref1 expansion of ref1, ref2, ref3 GDP per capita ref1, ref2 GVA of ref1, ref2, ref3 Hackney ref1, ref2, ref3 Haringey ref1, ref2 Islington ref1, ref2 Old Street ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 share of national GDP ref1 Shoreditch ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Tower Hamlets ref1 transport infrastructure of ref1 Crossrail ref1 Westminster ref1, ref2, ref3 Manchester ref1, ref2, ref3 Midlands ref1 Milton Keynes ref1, ref2 Newbury ref1 Newcastle ref1 Northern Ireland ref1 Northampton ref1 Office for National Statistics (ONS) ref1 Oxford ref1 Parliament House of Commons ref1 House of Lords ref1 pub industry of ref1 Reading ref1 Salford ref1 Slough ref1 United States of America (USA) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Baltimore, MD ref1 Boston, MA ref1, ref2 Buffalo, NY ref1 Cambridge, MA ref1 Chicago, IL ref1 Columbus, OH ref1 Detroit, MI ref1 economy of ref1 government of ref1, ref2 Irving, TX ref1 Jacksonville, FL ref1 Los Angeles, CA ref1 Minneapolis, MN ref1 Nashville, TN ref1 New York City, NY ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) ref1 Palo Alto, CA ref1 Portland, OR ref1, ref2 Raleigh, NC ref1 Salt Lake City, UT ref1 San Diego, CA ref1 San Francisco, CA ref1 Seattle, WA ref1, ref2 Washington DC ref1 Winston-Salem, NC ref1 University of Chicago faculty of ref1, ref2 University of London ref1 University of Sussex faculty of ref1 venture capital ref1, ref2 Visa facilities of ref1 Vodafone offices of ref1 wages ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 depression of ref1, ref2 growth of ref1 impact of immigration on ref1 low ref1, ref2 Walmart personnel of ref1, ref2 Waze acquired by Google ref1 We Are Apps ref1 Whitbread Costa Coffee ref1 personnel of ref1 Wikipedia ref1 Wilson, Harold ref1 administration of ref1 Wipro Technologies ref1 Wired (magazine) ref1 Woolfe, Steven UKIP spokesman on migration and financial affairs ref1 World Bank ref1 Xiaomi ref1 Yorkshire Post, The ref1 ZopNow ref1

The Facebook era: tapping online social networks to build better products, reach new audiences, and sell more stuff
by Clara Shih
Published 30 Apr 2009

Using online social networking, employees might also be able to bypass traditional organizational hierarchy and boundaries to network directly with senior managers or colleagues in other departments, units, and geographies. Just like blogging democratized who had a voice on the Internet, someone who is really active on Facebook and posts interesting links and commentary might win visibility in the company in ways which would simply not have been possible before. Creating New Value from Network Effects Metcalfe’s Law provides a good explanation behind the power and value of the online social graph. Originally used to describe telecommunications networks, it states that the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of members. This is because for n members, there are roughly n2 possible connections.

…

Among these n2 connections forms a social economy of mutual trust, favor, and contribution. Over time as new members join, the value of the each individual’s network increases as well as the value of the overall social economy. From the Library of Kerri Ross C h a p te r 3 S o c i a l Ca p i t a l f ro m N e t wo r k i n g O n l i n e 53 The Reciprocity Ring I experienced Metcalfe’s Law firsthand in spring 2008 during a somewhat contrived but nevertheless convincing offline experiment. It was the last day of a weeklong leadership course I was taking at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and in our final session together, we created a reciprocity ring to demonstrate how social networking can create value for everyone who participates.

…

Closed networks, on the other hand, offer more control and focused interaction among community members, but at the expense of lower adoption and engagement. For many CIOs in particular, going with closed networks might be tempting, but in so doing, they might miss out on the very aspect of online social networking that is so transformational: the collective social graph. As we discussed in Chapter 3,“Social Capital from Networking Online,” Metcalfe’s Law tells us that the value of a social networking site goes up exponentially with the number of members. It is precisely the reach, openness, and transparency of public social networking sites that make them so compelling. Although companies might want to adopt internal social networking tools such as Connectbeam and Thoughtfarmer (both introduced in Chapter 6,“Social Innovation”), these should be in addition to, not instead of, the greater opportunity of plugging into sites where employees can access and cross-pollinate ideas with customers, partners, and others outside of the company.

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power
by Michael A. Cusumano , Annabelle Gawer and David B. Yoffie
Published 6 May 2019

Rather—and assuming that long-distance services would eventually connect all users with telephones to each other—each additional user multiplied the potential value of the network by the number of other existing users (nodes) already connected. Today, we refer to the network dynamic described here as Metcalfe’s law, after Robert Metcalfe, the primary inventor of the Ethernet local networking technology during the early 1970s. Metcalfe argued that the value of a communications network was the same as the number of links between its nodes. He described this relationship with a simple equation: For a network of n nodes, the value of the network is n(n – 1)/2.

…

FIGURE 2-1: CONNECTIONS OR NODES IN THE TELEPHONE NETWORK Created by Derrick Coetzee (2006), public domain. The telephone business also had to solve the chicken-or-egg problem: how to get people to use the new technology at the beginning. As long as only a few people had telephones, the positive feedback loops were weak. But even without access to Metcalfe’s law, the phone companies believed that network effects would grow in strength over time as each new user was able to connect to other users on the network. Perhaps most importantly, a subset of investors formed American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) in 1885 as a subsidiary of the Bell Telephone Company to enhance and monetize the network effects.

…

See also Apple Jones, Alex, 191 Jourová, Věra, 205 Kalanick, Travis, 115, 224–25 Kasriel, Stephane, 46 Kinly, 110 Kodesh, Harel, 167 Lee, Jay, 124 leveraging a mega platform, 145–47 liability limitations, 93 LinkedIn, 70–71 Liss-Riordan, Shannon, 194–95 London’s black cabs, 148–51 Lore, Marc, 156, 157 Lotus, 87 Lyft and autonomous vehicle technology, 225–26 and General Motors, 147–48 labor lawsuit settlement, 193 as start-up, 115, 116, 117, 118 Ma, Jack, 65, 121, 123, 124, 262n40 machine learning and deep learning, 220–21 Mammoth Biosciences, 232–32 managers and entrepreneurs avoiding common mistakes, 135–38 avoiding current minefields, 206–9 entering the platform business, 169–71 market drivers and their effects, 59–61 selecting your platform strategy and business model, 101–4 Marriott Hotels, 142 mass shooting misinformation and harassment, 203 matchmakers, 80–83, 91, 250n22. See also transaction platforms Matchmakers (Evans and Schmalensee), 82–83 Mattel, 141–42 McMillon, Doug, 156, 158 messaging platforms, 41–42, 100–101 Metcalfe, Robert, 35, 35f Metcalfe’s law, 35, 35f Microsoft antitrust cases, 180–83, 272n9 Cortana and voice recognition, 221–23 growth model, 79 IBM’s contract for MS-DOS, 3–4 licensing DOS at low prices, 4, 40 mistiming the smartphone market, 130–33, 134–35 as one of “the Frightful Five,” 176–77 quantum computer strategy, 227 underwriting the cost of app development for Windows phones, 134 video game profit strategy, 43–44 Microsoft Azure and GE’s Predix, 163, 166 Microsoft Internet Explorer, 125–27, 263n51 Microsoft Office, 4, 5, 87 Microsoft Secrets (Cusumano and Selby), 10–11 Microsoft Windows giveaway of SDKs for DOS and, 4 licensing at low prices, 4, 40 phone based on, 130–35 profit from Windows XP, 79 mispricing on one side of the platform, 112–19 mistakes.

Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--And How to Make Them Work for You
by Sangeet Paul Choudary , Marshall W. van Alstyne and Geoffrey G. Parker
Published 27 Mar 2016

Matching quality is critical to delivering value and stimulating the long-term growth and success of a platform. It is achieved through excellence in product or service curation. Metcalfe’s law. A principle formulated by Robert Metcalfe which states that the value of a network grows nonlinearly as the number of users of the network increases, making more connections among users possible (a type of growth also known as convex growth). Specifically, Metcalfe’s law posits that the value of a network with n connected users is proportional to the square of the number of users (n2). Multihoming. The phenomenon of users engaging in similar types of interaction on more than one platform.

…

Demand economies of scale are the fundamental source of positive network effects, and thus the chief drivers of economic value in today’s world. This is not to say that supply economies of scale no longer matter; of course they do. But demand economies of scale, in the form of network effects, have become the most important differentiating factor. Metcalfe’s law is a useful way of encapsulating how network effects create value for those who participate in a network as well as for those who own or manage the network. Robert Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com, pointed out that the value of a telephone network grows nonlinearly as the number of subscribers to the network increases, making more connections among subscribers possible.

…

A standardized set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications that makes it easy for an outside programmer to write code that will connect seamlessly with the platform infrastructure. Brand effects. The power of a highly positive brand image to attract consumers and lead to rapid growth of a business. Not to be confused with network effects. Convex growth. See Metcalfe’s law. Core developers. Programmers and designers who create the core platform functions that provide value to platform participants. These developers are generally employed by the platform managers—the brand names that are familiar to users, such as Apple, Samsung, Airbnb, Uber, and many others. Their main job is to get the platform into user hands and to deliver value through tools and rules that make the core interaction easy and mutually satisfying.

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything
by Matthew Ball
Published 18 Jul 2022

What’s more, the Metaverse is emerging at a time when the largest vertical and horizontal tech platforms have already established enormous influence over our lives, as well as the technologies and business models of the modern economy. This power partly reflects the profound feedback loops in the digital era. Metcalfe’s Law, for example, states that the value of a communication network is proportional to the square of the number of its users, a relationship that helps to keep large social networks and services growing and presents a challenge to upstart competitors. Any business based on artificial intelligence or machine learning benefits from similar advantages as their datasets grow.

…

On occasion, we get everything right except for the timing. In 1998, Paul Krugman, who would win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences a decade later, wrote an (unintentionally) ironically titled article “Why Most Economists’ Predictions Are Wrong” in which he stated: “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”12 Krugman’s prediction, which predated the dotcom crash, as well as the founding of companies such as Facebook, Tencent, and PayPal, was quickly disproven.

…

Second, the ability to use any device and interact with any other user led to a surge in engagement—just imagine how much less you might use Facebook if you had a different account with different friends and different photos on your PC versus on your iPhone, and if you could only message those who were using the same device as you. If the digital era has been defined by network effects and Metcalfe’s Law, then the enablement of cross-platform play instantly made these virtual worlds more valuable by joining together their forked networks. Third, this increased engagement had a disproportionate impact on those building virtual worlds. Almost all of the costs to build a game, avatar, or item on Roblox, for example, are up-front and fixed.

The Silent Intelligence: The Internet of Things
by Daniel Kellmereit and Daniel Obodovski
Published 19 Sep 2013

But at the end of the day, the best investment opportunities are going to be driven by very well-defined problems that the Internet of Things will help solve: increased visibility, increased productivity, reduced guesswork, better risk management, and better connection to our environment. 29 Paul Graham, “How to Get Startup Ideas,” November 2012. http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html. 30 Iain Morris, “Intelligent Systems to Drive Value in M2M Market: IDC,” Telecom Engine, June 4, 2013. http://www.telecomengine.com/article/intelligent-systems-drive-value-m2m-market-idc. 31 Singularity University, “What Is Singularity University?” http://singularityu.org/overview/. 32 Wikipedia, “Metcalfe’s Law,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe’s_law. 33 Quantified Self, “What We Are Reading,” http://quantifiedself.com/. 34 Department of Health and Human Services, “Food Labeling; Calorie Labeling of Articles of Food in Vending Machines; Proposed Rule,“ Federal Register, April 6, 2011. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-04-06/html/2011-8037.htm. 35 Just prior to publishing, Jawbone acquired BodyMedia for over $100 million.

…

The last wire to disappear is the power cable — driven by advances in wireless power, energy harvesting, and power management. Finally, there is another important factor, which is the network effect. This tends to show exponential growth once you have a critical mass of intelligent items and connected items that are talking to one another. The law that affects this development is Metcalfe’s Law,32 which states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system. This law is applicable not only to telecommunications networks and social networks, but also to connected things, like M2M nodes. Assuming such a network effect will take place, one can assume it will create huge value for the ecosystem.

Running Money
by Andy Kessler
Published 4 Jun 2007

Actually, for those keeping track at home, it’s n � (n – 1). A single node has no connections, two nodes have two connections, one in either direction, three nodes have six, etc. This turned into the scale of the Web when millions of nodes were connected, and Metcalfe’s Law is what made Napster and peer-to-peer file sharing such huge waterfalls. In fact, maybe Metcalfe’s Law is the formula for Doug Engelbart’s scaling of human knowledge, just as Watt’s steam engine scaled human power. And Xerox PARC? I’ve been there a few times. The first was in the early 1990s, when Xerox management was hoping to impress Wall Street with a modernization kick.

…

But we had the luck of the Canucks. I have been nice to Canadians ever since. Fred was right to be nauseous. If everyone knows, it’s over. The clump of water was about to break up on the rocks, the second derivative had played out, enticing investors in with the seduction of faster and faster growth. Metcalfe’s Law was no longer a secret; you could see it in subscriber growth and Internet usage and equipment sales and page views and everything. Fast growth became an input and an assumption to value schlock like MP3.com and plenty Dip or Bubble? 227 of other garbage too. This also meant great companies went up way too far as well.

…

., 99–100, 234, 268 intellectual property separated from, 128, 130–35, 136, 234–35, 238, 251, 271 inventions and, 55–56, 58, 89, 125–26, 272 Index job market and, 241–45, 246, 261 outsourced low costs of, 133–35, 175, 251, 258–59 second derivatives, 26–28, 72, 77, 226 See also industrial economy; Industrial Revolution margin surplus, 234, 259, 260, 262–63, 266, 270, 295 importance of, 275, 277, 279, 280–83 PC’s effect on, 258 MAR/Hedge, 169 market demand, 78 components of, 57–59 Marks, Art, 144 Matsushita, 134 Mauretania (ocean liner), 95 Mayfield, 194 MCI, 61, 62, 72 Mead, Carver, 183 Meeker, Mary, 228 memory chips, 124, 126, 127, 154–55, 156 Metcalfe, Bob, 183, 188–91, 202, 290 Metcalfe’s Law, 190, 226 Mexican debt crisis, 164 Michelson, Albert, 190 microchips, 11, 46–47, 102–3, 129–35, 154–55 company sales, 208 development of, 124–28 outsourced manufacture of, 130–35, 199, 252–55, 259 production costs, 141 See also microprocessors Microma, 127–28 Micron Technology, 19–21, 154 Index microprocessors, 101, 123–28 demand for faster, 66 significance of, 125, 183 Microsoft, 61, 69, 97, 128, 142, 194, 207, 260, 270 browser, 199–201 company value, 274 innovative process of, 278 tie-ins by, 197 as top market cap company, 111 See also Windows Microstrategy, 177 Microsystems, 44 Milken, Michael, 11 Miller, George, 223 mining industry, 53, 57–59 MIT, 184, 185, 187 MMC (chip company), 208 momentum funds, 207 Mondale, Walter, 187 Monetary Conference, 264–65 monster markets, 45, 46, 67, 248, 279, 295 Montgomery Securities Hedge Fund conference, 29–33 Moore, Gordon, 103, 124, 128 Moore, Nick, 18–21, 72, 162, 175–81, 188, 208, 217–19, 228–29, 293, 296 Moore’s Law, 103, 124 Morgan Stanley, 11, 24–25, 39–40, 45, 131, 153, 160, 224, 251 Morgan Stanley Tech Conference (2001), 228–29 Morgan Stanley Tokyo, 154 Morley, Edward, 190 Morse Chain, 110 Mosaic Communications, 193, 195, 196–97 Mostek, 127 Motorola, 11, 127 307 mouse inventor of, 118, 119 outsourced manufacture of, 259 MP3.com, 212–16, 226, 248, 293 MP3 files, 206 Mueller, Glenn, 194, 195, 197–98 Mueller, Nancy, 198 music downloading, 202, 205–8, 247 copyright violation, 293 domain rights, 212–16, 226, 248 piracy, 206–7, 263 See also Napster music software, 146–49 mutual funds, 290 nanotechnology, 296 Napoleonic Wars, 25, 271 Napster, 190, 202, 203, 205–7, 213, 248, 263 NASA, 101, 184 NASA/Ames, 187 NASDAQ, 223, 224, 225, 288 Nash, Jack, 14–17, 24, 29, 105, 278 National Center for Supercomputing Applications, 197 NCP, 185 Nelson, Ted, 118 NetApp.

Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
by Robert W. McChesney
Published 5 Mar 2013

It accounts for one in seven minutes spent online worldwide.”14 Metcalfe’s law was responsible for Rupert Murdoch being hoisted by his own petard. Murdoch’s News Corporation spent $580 million for MySpace in 2005; at that moment MySpace had what looked to be a decent shot at grabbing a commanding lead in the nascent social-media market and getting a Google-type monopoly. It soon found itself in Facebook’s rearview mirror and fading fast; Murdoch unloaded MySpace in 2011 for $35 million.15 There is also a flip side to Metcalfe’s Law: those excluded from a network face an accelerating cost of exclusion.

…

Varian, Information Rules (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999), 173. 12. Anderson, “Web Is Dead,” 122–27, 164. 13. Metcalfe’s law is discussed in Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (New York: Penguin, 2011), 41. 14. “A Fistful of Dollars,” The Economist, Feb. 4, 2012, 11. 15. Somini Sengupta and Nick Bilton, “Facebook Plays Offense and Defense in a Single Deal,” New York Times, Apr. 11, 2012, B4. 16. For a discussion of this point, see Rahul Tongia and Ernest J. Wilson III, “The Flip Side of Metcalfe’s Law: Multiple and Growing Costs of Network Exclusion,” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 665–81. 17.

…

Information networks, in particular, generate demand-side economies of scale, related to the capture of customers, as opposed to supply-side economies of scale (prevalent in traditional oligopolistic industry) related to reduction in costs as scale goes up.11 The largest firm in an industry increases its attractiveness to consumers by an order of magnitude as it gets a greater market share, and makes it almost impossible for competitors with declining shares to remain attractive or competitive. Wired’s Anderson puts the matter succinctly: “Monopolies are actually even more likely in highly networked markets like the online world. The dark side of network effects is that rich nodes get richer. Metcalfe’s law, which states that the value of a network increases in proportion to the square of connections, creates winner-take-all markets, where the gap between the number one and number two players is typically large and growing.”12 Bob Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet protocol that wires computers together, regarded the network effect as so prevalent that he formulated the law that goes by his name: the usefulness of a network increases at an accelerating rate as you add each new person to it.13 Google search is an example; the quality of its algorithm improves with more users, leaving other search engines with a less effective and attractive product.

Magic Internet Money: A Book About Bitcoin
by Jesse Berger
Published 14 Sep 2020

It demands accountability from users in order to minimize the potential for interference from adversarial third parties. To those who place a high value on having total control over their money, this cost is decidedly worth its price. 6.2 Teamwork Makes the Dream Work “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African Proverb According to Metcalfe’s law,12 the effect of a communications network is proportional to the square of its number of connected users. To illustrate this point, consider the fax machine. A single machine, with nowhere to send documents and no peers to receive them from, is useless. However, when connected to others, its utility increases with each additional machine it can interact with.

…

Chapter 5: Innovation 10Vildana Haijric, “Bitcoin’s 9,000,000% Rise this Decade Leaves the Skeptics Aghast” Bloomberg: Cryptocurrencies online (December 31, 2019). 11“Bitcoin’s Security Model: A Deep Dive” CoinDesk online (November 13, 2016; updated February 22, 2019). Chapter 6: Resilience 12Accredited to Robert Metcalfe in regard to Ethernet, Metcalfe’s law was presented in 1980. George Gilder expressed it in this form in 1993. Chapter 7: Scarcity 13Andrew Glester, “The Asteroid Trillionaires” physicsworld (June 11, 2018). 14Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder (Random House, 2012). Chapter 8: Competition 15Litecoin (LTC) was released via open-source on GitHub on October 7, 2011, by Charlie Lee, a Google employee and former Engineering Director at Coinbase.

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You
by Eli Pariser
Published 11 May 2011

The fight between Google and Facebook hinges on which can achieve lock-in for the most users. The dynamics of lock-in are described by Metcalfe’s law, a principle coined by Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of the Ethernet protocol that wires together computers. The law says that the usefulness of a network increases at an accelerating rate as you add each new person to it. It’s not much use to be the only person you know with a fax machine, but if everyone you work with uses one, it’s a huge disadvantage not to be in the loop. Lock-in is the dark side of Metcalfe’s law: Facebook is useful in large part because everyone’s on it. It’d take a lot of mismanagement to overcome that basic fact.

…

LinkedIn Linux Lippmann, Walter Livingston, Jessica local-maximum problem lock-in “Long Live the Web” (Berners-Lee) Loopt Lovell, Todd Lowenstein, George luck Lynch, Zack Ma, Jack MacDougald, Harry machine learning Mancini, Paul Mark, David Mayer, Marissa Mayer-Schonberger, Viktor McLarty, Mack McLuhan, Marshall McPhie, Jonathan Meadowlands meaning threats mean world syndrome MeetUp Metcalfe, Bob Metcalfe’s law Microsoft Bob Live middleman, elimination of Migra corridos Milgram, Stanley Mill, John Stuart Minority Report Moore’s law MORIS Moses, Robert mousetraps MoveOn Mulvenon, James MySpace Nabokov, Vladimir National Rifle Association (NRA) National Security Agency (NSA) Nauman, Arthur Ne’eman, Yuval Negroponte, Nicholas Nemeth, Charlan Netflix Netflix Challenge Newmark, Craig news Facebook feeds Google News people-powered Yahoo News newspapers editorial ethics and ombudsmen and New York Times 9/11 Nordhaus, Ted Norvig, Peter Nosenko, Yuri Obama, Barack Oceana “Of Sirens and Amish Children” (Benkler) OkCupid Olson, Carrie Oswald, Lee Harvey overfitting Pabst Page, Larry PageRank Palmer, Chris Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) Pandora PanelDirector Pareles, Jon Parker, Sean Pattern Language, A (Alexander et al.)

The Internet Is Not the Answer
by Andrew Keen
Published 5 Jan 2015

The IPO realized a payout of $765 million for Kleiner Perkins, which was more than double the value of the entire fund from which the original investment came.18 Clark’s investment of $3 million came to be worth $633 million—which explains why the incorrigibly self-aggrandizing entrepreneur put the identifying number 633MN on the tail of an executive jet he bought with some of his proceeds from the IPO.19 And the just turned twenty-four-year-old Marc Andreessen, who two years earlier had been making $6.85 an hour as a NCSA programmer, was suddenly worth $58 million, thus becoming the first in a long line of boy tycoons minted by the Internet.20 “What happened to Netscape Communications was without parallel,” notes David Kaplan, “and came to define modern Silicon Valley.”21 Netscape’s success drove the first great commercial expansion of the Internet. The number of Internet users grew from 16 million in 1995 to 361 million in 2000. This growth confirmed Metcalfe’s law—Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe’s eponymous rule that each new person who joins a network increases the power of that network exponentially. It triggered the dot-com boom, a half decade of irrational exuberance that created Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, and thousands of failed Internet startups, including my own, an online music website backed by Intel and SAP called AudioCafe.

…

It’s what Moritz—a former Time magazine technology journalist who made his fortune being right as an early investor in Google, PayPal, Zappos, LinkedIn, and Yahoo—describes as the “Personal Revolution.” We can all enjoy the free tools and services with which Google and Facebook equip us to search for information and network with our friends and colleagues. Indeed, the more we use the Google search engine, the more accurate the product becomes. And the more of us who join Facebook, the more Metcalfe’s law kicks into place and so the more valuable Facebook becomes to us. “Right here between San Francisco and San Jose something utterly remarkable has been going on, is going on and will go on. It’s something that has only occurred in one or two places in the whole course of human history,”77 Moritz says in describing this personal revolution engineered by data factories like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Yelp.

…

Over the next twenty-five years, however, that digital gale will grow into a Category 5 hurricane and radically disrupt every industry from education, finance, and transportation to health care, government, and manufacturing. This ongoing storm will be fueled by the relentless improvements in the power of both computing (Moore’s law) and the network (Metcalfe’s law), the increasing speed of broadband access, and the shift in all computer applications to the cloud. The fall in the price of smartphones and the growth in wireless networks, Patrik Cerwall’s research team at Ericsson reminds us, will mean that by 2018 there will be 4.5 billion smartphone subscribers.

The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution
by Henry Schlesinger
Published 16 Mar 2010

“This Western Union seems to me very like collecting all the paupers in the State and arranging them into a union so as to make rich men of them,” quipped a man of finance. Of course, Western Union eventually succeeded for a variety of reasons, the most interesting of which is a nineteenth-century version of Metcalfe’s Law. Named for Robert Metcalfe, an engineer at Xerox PARC and coinventor of Ethernet, the law simply states that a network increases in value as more users (or communicating devices) are added to it. Stated another way, one electromagnetic telegraph was useless, two marginally better, and six better still.

…

Like a double-sided clock face, one side offered the latest prices to traders on the exchange’s floor, while the other side faced out on the street for the messengers. Patented in 1867, the battery-powered display was simply a short-range telegraphic network, with its line extending no farther than the trading floor of the exchange. It was not long afterward that Laws hit on the kind of idea that makes men rich. Why stop at just a single indicator? Again, Metcalfe’s Law kicked in: if one Gold Indicator was good, then hundreds were even better, and potentially profitable. Laws quit his position on the exchange and formed the Gold Indicator Company to provide the devices on a subscription basis, linked by telegraph wires from a central exchange to any business that needed or wanted one.

…

., 260–61 mathematics, 38, 75–76, 77, 124, 177 Maxwell, James Clerk, 77, 87, 114, 184–85 Valentine by a Telegraph Clerk, 114–15, 142 McPherson, Sister Aimee Semple, 222 media, 52, 94, 123, 124, 130, 149–50, 192, 193, 203, 221–22, 246, 252 medical fraud devices, 161–63, 163, 164–68 Melville, Herman, Moby-Dick, 64–65 mercury, 85, 239 mercury cell, 234–35 metals, 43, 66–67, 140, 145, 189 bimetallic theory, 43–50, 59 See also specific metals Metcalfe’s Law, 113 methane fuel cell, 277 Meucci, Antonio, 158 microbatteries, 281–82 Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), 277 micro-electroscope, 46 Micro-Modules, 263 microprocessor, 248 military, 100, 213, 225–36, 263, 275 integrated circuits, 264 lithium batteries, 275 radar, 259–61 radio, 212, 217–24, 227–36 telegraph, 129–30 transistors, 248–49, 263 wireless telegraph, 195, 211–12, 213 “milk bottle” plan, 152 mimeograph, Edison, 171 mine detector, 233 miniaturization, 239–43, 281 MI rocket launcher, 233 mirror galvanometer, 124–25, 125, 126, 127 Missell, David, 181–83 MIT, 226, 237, 259, 280, 281 Rad Lab, 259–60 MK26 torpedo, 233 Modern Electronics, 203 Moleyns, Frederick de, 147 Moll, Gerard, 82, 83 Montgomery Ward, 175 Moore, Gordon, 262, 265–66 Moore’s Law, 265–66, 271 Morgan, J.

Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy
by George Gilder
Published 16 Jul 2018

Perhaps the street where you live, Main Street is the site of local businesses and jobs. Metcalfe’s Law: The value and power of a network grows by the square of the number of compatible nodes it links. Named for the engineer Robert Metcalfe (1946–), a co-inventor of Ethernet, this law is a rough index and deeply counterintuitive. (The Internet is worth less than the square of its six billion connected devices.) But the law applies to smaller networks, and it explains the vectors of value creation of companies such as Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon, which now dominate stock market capitalization. Metcalfe’s Law may well apply to the promise of new digital currencies and ultimately assure the success of a new transactions layer for the Internet software stack.

…

This understanding of economic growth follows from Karl Popper’s insight that a scientific proposition must be framed in terms that are falsifiable or refutable. Government guarantees prevent learning and thus thwart economic growth. All expanding businesses and industries follow a learning curve that ordains a 20 to 30 percent decrease in costs with every doubling of total units sold. Classical learning curves are Moore’s Law in microchips and Metcalfe’s Law in networking. Raymond Kurzweil generalized the idea as a “law of accelerating returns,” a concept that Henry Adams introduced in a learning curve chart in The Education of Henry Adams and applied to the increase of energy output. Economic growth as a learning process does not directly gain from “machine-learning,” unless the symbols processed are interpreted by human beings.

Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets
by David J. Leinweber
Published 31 Dec 2008

Many of the greatest hits in this chapter existed in some form for a long time but were impractical because the roomful of mainframes needed for them was so large and expensive. The small number of people and firms with the resources to do these limited the market incentives for them to grow and succeed. Two basic technological laws, which are really more like notions on their way to concepts, are Moore’s and Metcalfe’s laws. Moore’s law is the well-known doubling of computational power every 18 months. Metcalfe’s law is the less well-known maxim that the utility of a network grows as the square of the number of users.2 These are as close as we come to laws of nature for technology. The magnitude of the progress as we move out to the further reaches of Moore and Metcalfe space can’t be overstated.

…

Computer programs increasingly take over tasks from people, and allow people to amplify their abilities using machines. The “digerati” (a hybrid of digital and literati ) would call this artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligence amplification (IA). * Moore’s Law is the well-known doubling of computational power every 18 months. Metcalfe’s Law is the less well-known maxim that the utility of a network grows as the square of the number of users. An Illustrated History of Wir ed Markets 27 Ray Kurzweil, one of the great inventors of our age, built a reading machine for the blind in 1976 and then started a musical instrument company with help from one of his customers, Stevie Wonder.

…

See keep it simple, stupid strategy language model eAnalyst, 56–58, 214–215 predicting the market, 57–59 tag cloud, xl LeBaron, Blake, 48 Lewis, Kevin, xxi–xxiii Li, Feng, 218–219 Lichstein, Henry, 154, 155, 189 LISP, 152 language, xxviii, 159–160, 179 LISP based machines, xxvi–xxvii, 162–163 LISP based trading systems, xxvii–xxviii, 160–161 Macsyma, 159–160 LISP Machines, xxvi–xxvii, 153 Lo, Andrew, 82 maximizing predictability, 131 Optimal Control of Execution Costs, 74 on profits, 97 load duration curve, 329–330 London Stock Exchange, 7, 33, 72 long portfolio, 120–123 Long Term Capital Management, 197, 280, 323 LSE See London Stock Exchange machine translation, 55, 85 Macsyma, 159–160 Malkiel, Burton, 89, 109 Map of the Market, 46–47, 246 marked to market, 284, 301 market data graphics, 33, 34–35 market impact, 111, 129, 203 modeling, 74–76 market inefficiency, 124–128 “common factor” analysis, 127 earnings forecast, 126 earnings surprises, 126–127 insider trading, 127 mergers and acquisitions, 127 secondary equity offerings, 127 sector analysis, 127 stock buyback, 127 stock split, 124–126 market maker, 29, 67, 166, 237 and market manipulation, 255 and message activity, 56, 237–239 automated, 67–68, 101 See also ATD market manipulation bluffing, 258–259 cyber-manipulations, 261–270 elements of success, 260–261 message boards, 239, 254–255, 256–58, 261–269 painting the tape, 256 using communication technology, 259–260 market neutral investing, 120–124 Index market neutral portfolio, 120–124 market transparency, 61, 281–287 lack of, 298 NMS, 41,49 MarketMind data feeds and databases, 173 hardware, 161, 175 information flows and displays, 168–173 intelligent editor, assistant, 167 QuantEx, 175–176 rule language, 169, 176 top-level design, 164 virtual charting, 166–167 Marketocracy, 232–233 MarkeTrac, 45 maximizing predictability, 190–191 MBS. See Mortgage-backed security Merton, Robert, 280 message board, xxxiv, 56 counting messages, 237–240 manipulation of, 239, 254–255, 256–258, 261–269 (see also, NEIP) social media, 205 stock recommendations, 229 whisper numbers, 241–246 message volume, 237–241, 261 Metcalf, Robert, 62 Metcalf ’s Law, 26, 328 Minsky, Marvin, 39, 149,162 molecular search, 205, 220 SEC filings, 221–222 Web commerce firms, 224 Moore, Gordon, 62 Moore’s law, 26, 187, 188, 328 brain imaging technology, xxxvi Deep Blue, 71 definition, 32, 62 natural language processing, 206 the human brain, xxxv moral hazard, 312 NABI and, 319 Moravec, Hans, 32 349 Mortgage-backed security, 61, 279.

Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence
by Richard Yonck
Published 7 Mar 2017

Not just the actual flights, but all the computing done throughout the planning and execution of the eleven-year, seventeen-mission Apollo program.9 It’s easy for us to forget just how much computing power we now wield in our everyday lives, but it’s often an even greater challenge to grasp just how much things have changed in a relatively short number of years. The progression described by Moore’s law and many of the other comparable technology “laws” such as Kryder’s law (hard drive storage density doubles every thirteen months) and Metcalfe’s law (the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system) is an exponential one.10 When something doubles at a regular rate, whether the doubling takes place daily, annually, or once a century, we say it is growing exponentially. This type of growth can occur in everything from biological systems such as cell growth, to animal populations, to compound interest on investments.

…

It’s very easy to look at a nascent technology and dismiss it for its lack of sophistication, power, or perceived value. However, as stated earlier, the nature of technological growth and exponential progress means that technology could soon mature into a transformational powerhouse. Moore’s law, Kryder’s law, Metcalfe’s law, and others recognize that many aspects of our manufactured world improve at an exponential pace. In light of this, it’s difficult to look at affective computing and think that the same can’t happen to it. As we can see, if misused, this one emerging technology has the potential to unravel an enormous part of our social fabric.

…

See also consciousness and AI machine logic, 36 Machine Perception Laboratory, 114–115 “The Machine Stops” (Forster), 229 Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, 100 magnetoencephalography (MEG), 126–127 Mahaffie, John, 173–174 Mahoor, Mohammad, 113 The Man Who Tasted Shapes (Cytowick, Richard), 45 Manber, Udi, 39 Mandy, digital assistant, 3–4, 74, 161–162 Manhattan Project, 272 marketing and affective computing, 138–139 Mars Needs Moms (Breathed/Wells), 95–96 massive open online courses (MOOCs), 120–121 Matrix scenario, 262–263 The Media Equation (Nass and Reeves), 28, 50–51 Media Lab, MIT, 42, 52–53, 56–57, 61 Medtronic, 125–126 Mehrabian, Albert, 25–26 memory and emotion, 21 memory formation, 110, 115, 145 Metcalfe’s law, 40, 147 METI. See Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) Metlife 2011 report on elder finances, 157 MicroExpressions Training Tool, 55–56 Microsoft, 51, 73, 196–197 Microsoft Cognitive Services, 73 Microsoft Kinect, 144 Military Information Support Operations (MISO), 134 military training and socialization, 123–124 Millward-Brown, 69–70 mind control, 127–128 MindReader, 60–61, 103, 110 MindSet, 213 MindWave, 213 “Mind-World Correspondence Principle” (Goertzel), 258–259 Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), 150–151 Minsky, Marvin, 247, 260 Mirror System Hypothesis (MSH), 24 mirroring, 22–24 MISO.

The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks
by Joshua Cooper Ramo
Published 16 May 2016

The difference between Bob Metcalfe and his wife sharing grocery lists and a connected, national network of husbands and wives is immense—an insight that led Bob Metcalfe and his wife to start a networking company that made them billionaires. Metcalfe’s Law has another angle, and it’s here where some of the unique Macht of network gates is revealed: It’s not merely that the power of a network grows exponentially with each additional user; it’s that the cost of being cut out grows every bit as fast. Maybe even faster. If I shut you out of Google today, it’s painful. But tomorrow—after a day of new information and websites and services coming online—it will be even more costly. The network scientists Rahul Tongia and Ernest Wilson have called this “the flip side of Metcalfe’s Law.” To be excluded from a database of cancer genetics when it has a million members, for instance, is probably not such a painful problem; to be locked out of the chance to compare your genes with those of a billion others might be fatal.

…

“Complex Networks as an Emerging Property of Hierarchical Preferential Attachment,” Physical Review E 92, 062809 (2015). But there’s another secret: Albert-László Barabási, “Network Science,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences 371, no. 1987 (March 2013). The network scientists: Rahul Tongia and Ernest J. Wilson III, “The Flip Side of Metcalfe’s Law: Multiple and Growing Costs of Network Exclusion,” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 665–81. fifty-one national enclosures: Ron E. Hassner and Jason Wittenberg, “Barriers to Entry: Who Builds Fortified Boundaries and Why,” International Security 40, no. 1 (Summer 2015): 157–90.

Cryptoeconomics: Fundamental Principles of Bitcoin
by Eric Voskuil , James Chiang and Amir Taaki
Published 28 Feb 2020

If this was the case there would be no reason to advocate for a single coin. Network Effect Fallacy There is a theory that the utility created by an economy varies with the square of the number of its merchants , assuming each merchant offers the same value of goods or services for sale in the one coin . The theory is an application of Metcalfe’s Law [477] . This implies that an even split of the economy reduces combined utility by half. For example, if 20 merchants has utility 400 then 2 networks of 10 of these merchants has utility 200. However, the ability to exchange any units of one coin for the other collapses the utility of the two economies into a hybrid economy.

…

Any contrary behavior implies a purely speculative condition [901] , not supported by the fact of fixed supply. PRICE Lunar Fallacy There is a theory that hoarding bitcoin guarantees to perpetual profit . The theory is based on the following economic laws. One money is better than two ( Metcalfe’s Law [902] ) Better money displaces other monies ( Thiers’ Law [903] ) At fixed supply , price rises with demand ( Law of Supply and Demand [904] ) Potential increase in demand is unbounded ( trade is positive sum) Hoarding is purely speculative , with all returns constituting profit or loss .

Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction
by Derek Thompson
Published 7 Feb 2017

According to a 2014 Niche study, the most common mobile uses for teenagers are texting, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Pandora, Twitter, and phone calls. Six of the eight (texting, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and the old-fashioned telephone) are just different tools for self-expression—visual, textual, and voice. These social networks really work only when they’re big.46 There is an idea called Metcalfe’s law, which says that the value of a network is proportional to the number of its users squared. Consider, for example, a dating app. With five users, it’s worthless. Even with a hundred users, it’s not quite alluring. But with 10,000 users within a one-mile radius, it’s pretty easy to persuade user 10,001 to join the app.

…

., 110 marketing and fashion, 49, 134 of Fifty Shades of Grey, 202–3 importance of, 8 information as, 82 necessity of, 62 in politics, 40 resistance to, 57 marriage equality, 128–29 The Martian (2015), 238 Martin, Max, 75, 76 mass production, 48, 49 A Matter of Taste (Lieberson), 136–37, 322n135, 323n135 MAYA (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable), 47–48, 56, 59, 70–71, 286–87 McGraw, Peter, 146 Mean Girls (2004), 170n meaning, desire for, 15, 57 Meeker, Mary, 12 memory, 86, 99–100 Mendelsohn, Nicola, 273 Mendelsund, Peter, 98 Messitte, Anne, 197–99, 200, 202–3, 205 metacognition, 42 Metcalfe’s law, 220 Miller, Dave, 164 Millet, Jean-François, 312n22 Minecraft, 58–59 mobile technology, 11–12, 67 Model T cars, 48, 133 Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci), 168–69 Monet, Claude and art dealer, 251–52 and Caillebotte’s bequest, 22, 23, 24, 312n22 Caillebotte’s friendship with, 21 fame of, 19–20, 27 selling works of, 26 Moonies, 217, 217n Moore’s law, 290, 333n289 Morisot, Berthe, 312n22 Morse, Samuel, 151 Morton, Mary, 26 Mosseri, Adam, 268, 270 movies and Hollywood, 103–6 and Academy Awards, 126–27 animated films, 110–11 apocalypse genre of, 112–13 and audiences, 107, 113–14, 127–28, 291 and best seller lists, 237 and chaos, 177 as complex products, 177, 178–180 distribution of success in, 177–78 double standards in, 127–28 and emergence of television, 297 and familiarity, 181–82 franchise strategy in, 7, 181–82 gender bias in, 123–28, 321n126 globalization of, 182 and high-concept pitches, 61 international consumption of, 291 lack of diversity in, 123–28, 129–130, 321n126 and merchandising, 294 predicting successes in, 237–38 and promotional expenses, 181 rules for storytelling in, 111, 113–14 studio system of, 181 suspense genre of, 112 and television, 10–11, 290, 297 and ticket sales, 10, 11, 181, 182 multiplier effects of hits, 240–41, 245 Munoz, Joe, 222 Murdoch, Rupert, 115n, 233, 235 museums, 32–33, 41 music and Billboard, 80–82, 134, 166, 175, 176–77, 238 and chaos mitigation, 180–81 collaborative filtering in, 69–70 digital revolution in, 289–290 distribution of, 33–34 and earworms, 79–80 elemental role of, in civilization, 85–86 finding new, 68–70 habituation/dishabituation in, 82–85 hip-hop/rap music, 81–82 and hooks, 3–4, 76, 79, 80, 82 and Kotecha, 73–76 and language, 85–86 and Leslie, 301–5 and memory, 85–86 and music labels, 175n, 304–5 and neophobia, 68 and Pandora, 67–68 and phonographs, 289 pop music, 33, 59–60, 73–77, 80–85, 90–91, 176–77 preference for familiar in, 79 quality/catchiness of, 34–37, 76–77, 80, 142 and radio stations, 180–81 rankings in, 205–6 repetition in, 77–80, 82, 83–85, 283 and rhyme-as-reason effect, 92–94 “Rock Around the Clock” (Bill Haley and His Comets), 163–67 rock ’n’ roll, 175–77 rules in, 85 and song-testing operations, 35–36, 37, 142 and speech-to-song illusion, 77–79 and Spotify, 68–70 structure in, 3–4, 76, 84–85 and Swedish music industry, 75–76 and technology, 13–14 and vinyl records, 13, 292 Muth, Claudia, 57 MySpace, 151, 152 myths and myth-busting, 130–31 name choices, 135–37, 139–142, 152–53, 322–23n135 Nast, Condé, 46 neophilia/neophobia, 7, 48–49, 56, 68, 138–39, 160 Netflix, 130 networks, importance of understanding, 8, 305 newness, optimal, 60–61, 61 news and journalism, 253–275 and aggregators, 265–66 and aspiration-behavior gap, 271–72, 272n and Facebook, 267–275 and familiarity/surprise in, 65 and Gallup, 258–261, 267, 275 and golden age of reading, 255 and Internet, 265–66, 291, 292 and measuring readership, 257–58, 259–261 myths and falsehoods in, 130–31 new economic model in, 292 news alerts, 65 objective of, 253 and power of press, 130–31 and reader preferences, 253–54, 257–58, 264, 267–273 repetition in, 64–65 and smaller papers, 256–57 and social media, 266 and syndication of news, 257 and tabloids, 255–56 and television, 262, 264–65, 273, 290 Newton, Nigel, 233 New York City, 47 New Yorker magazine, 272 New York Times, 157, 196 Nielsen, 33, 81 Nineteenth Amendment, 92 Ninth Symphony (Beethoven), 4 Nixon, Richard, 38 nostalgia, 100 novelty, 60–61, 61 Obama, Barack, 86–91 Obergefell v.

…

., 93 Sisley, Alfred, 22, 23, 24, 312n22 Six Feet Under (television series), 247 Skipper, John, 63–64 Sloan, Alfred, 48 smartphones, 65, 159 Smith, Tom, 232 Snapchat, 152, 159 Snow, John, 191–93, 327n193 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), 296 social influence, 142 social media and #BlackLivesMatter movement, 82n and communication fashions, 151–52 and consumer behavior, 14 and disfluency, 285 exposure afforded by, 34 fleeting fame/infamy on, 291–92 and happiness, 289 and nature of content, 12 and news coverage, 266 and political parties, 41 self-promotion on, 230 social networks, 215–223 feedback loops in, 218 and homophily, 216–17, 219, 221 and influencers, 223 and Metcalfe’s law, 220 SoMo, 237, 238 Sons of Anarchy (television series), 246 Sood, Aditya, 237–38 The Sopranos (television series), 244, 247, 248, 249 Sorcher, Rob, 244 Sorkin, Aaron, 246 SoundOut, 35–36, 37, 142 Sousa, John Philip, 289 speech-to-song illusion, 77–79, 94–95 speech writing, 86–91, 283 spoilers, 116 SportsCenter, 64, 65 sports coverage, 62–64, 65 Spotify, 34, 37, 68–70, 125 Star Wars series, 102, 104–6, 114–15, 117–18, 285 Steinberg, Laurence, 158 Stern, Lyss, 197–98, 200 Sternbergh, Adam, 116 stories and storytelling, 102–18, 119–132 about vampires and death, 119–122 anticipation cultivated in, 116 and audiences, 107–8, 111–14 and Bruzzese, 106–8, 111–14 and chaos of life, 172 and dark side of fluency, 131–32 and familiar falsehoods in the press, 130–31 at FX (television channel), 246 and gender bias, 123–28 genres and subgenres in, 111–12 and hero’s journey, 108–11 and history, 129 and origins of Lucas’s Star Wars, 102–6, 114–15, 117–18 persuasive power of, 130, 283–84 predictability in, 116–17 and predicting successes, 107–8 rules in, 111, 113–14 serials, 103, 103n sources of influence in, 114–16 spoilers in, 116 Strand Bookstore, 254, 277, 279, 280 Suisman, David, 33 Sullivan, Andrew, 292 Super Bowl games, 134, 152 superheroes, 103–4 surprise, 4, 62, 65, 70–71 suspense, 109 Swedish music industry, 75–76 tastes, 124–25, 134, 279 technology entertainment shaped by, 13–14 and media revolution, 10–11 mobile technology, 11–12 and Moore’s law, 290, 333n289 and music, 289 pace of change in, 290 and the printed word, 255 smartphones, 65, 159 and teenagers, 155 and virtual reality, 291 See also specific technology, including Internet teenagers, 68, 124–25, 154–160 telegraph machines, 151, 257 telephones, 65, 151, 159, 288 television broadcast television, 238–243 cable television, 41, 243–46, 251 changes in viewing of, 12–13, 65 and laugh tracks, 144–49, 145n, 148n milestone events for, 263–64 and Minow’s “vast wasteland” claim, 264 and movies, 10–11, 290, 297 and newspapers, 262, 264–65, 273, 290 and political rhetoric, 92 popularity of, 10–11, 289 predicting successes in, 238–249, 238n and presidential addresses, 38, 39 and radio, 290–91 scripted dramas on, 182, 243 sports coverage on, 62–64 subscription channels, 246–47 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 31 texting, 151 Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), 171n Thompson, Ben, 292 Thompson, Clive, 58–59 Time Warner, 11 Tinder, 220–22, 221n Tin Pan Alley, 33–34 Titus, Jason, 236 Tolstoy, Leo, 97–98, 99, 116 traditions, 135–36 trailers, 103n Trithemius, Johannes, 150 True Strange magazine, 176 Trump, Donald, 40, 40n, 64–65 Tumbusch, Thomas, 294 Turner, Ted, 115n 21 (Adele), 36 21st Centry Fox, 130 Twilight and fanfic, 185–87, 204 Twitter and audiences, 219 and biases, 130 broadcasters on, 194 and consumer behavior, 14 distribution power of, 34 emergence of, 152 and news consumption, 265, 266 and size of audience, 228–29 Uber, 61–62 unconscious bias, 125, 127 Universal McCann, 232 universal story, 109, 109n urbanization, 137 vampires, 119, 120–22, 120n Vampires, Burial, and Death (Barber), 120 vicarious goal fulfillment, 271, 273 video games, 58–59 videos, online, 34 Vine, 13, 14, 152 viral hits and the viral myth, 185–208 and broadcast diffusion, 189–190, 193, 200–203, 206, 207–8 and dark broadcasters, 194, 195, 201, 206 and disease metaphor, 188–193 Fifty Shades of Grey, 185–87, 197–205, 206–7 and information cascades, 193, 200, 200–201, 201 virtual reality, 291 Voltaire, 119–120, 120n vulnerability, 170, 223 The Walking Dead (television series), 249 Wallace, David Foster, 70n Walls, David, 177 Walt Disney Company, 11, 292–301, 298n Wang, Avery, 235–36 Warhol, Andy, 291–92 Warren, Caleb, 146–47 Watts, Duncan and chaos theory, 170–71, 183 and information cascades, 170–71, 179, 183 and Leslie, 306 on Mona Lisa, 168–69 and music rankings, 205–6 on small networks, 223 on spread of ideas, 221 “We Are Young” (Fun), 134 Weiner, Matthew, 244, 252 Weiss, Dan “D.

The Paypal Wars: Battles With Ebay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth
by Eric M. Jackson
Published 15 Jan 2004

Similarly, the advantage of participating in a payments service like PayPal increases as the number of other users goes up. If only a handful of people in the world accept money through PayPal, there is little benefit to taking the time to create an account. But if PayPal can be used to pay millions of people, the account is much more valuable. Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com, coined Metcalfe’s Law as a way of understanding the power of networks. He claimed that the value of a network equals the square of its users, implying that a network with twice as many users as a competitor is four times as valuable.4 Given Peter’s firm belief in the importance of quickly scaling up our network, it didn’t surprise anyone that the calmness he displayed at the disappointing Scotty event was absent following the dotBank and X.com launches.

…

Chapter 2 1. Lisa Branstein, “Former Intuit CEO Harris Joins X.com,” The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 1999, sec. B12. 2. Ibid. 3. Stephanie AuWerter, “Free, No-Minimum S&P 500 Fund,” SmartMoney.com, December 8, 1999, no longer available online. 4. Warren Packard, “From the Ground Floor: Metcalfe’s Law Has Some Shortcomings, but It’s Still a Pretty Good Validator of the Internet Economy,” Red Herring, August 2000, no longer available online. 5. For an excellent profile on Luke and Max, see Computer Science Alumni News, “Max Levchin and Luke Nosek: Pals and PayPals,” Winter 2001, http://www.cs.uiuc. edu/news/alumni/jan01/lev.html. 6.

…

See also “PayPal Paul” MasterCard sanctions on PayPal, 148, 198 McCormick, Andrew, 255 media coverage CEO change at X.com (PayPal), 112–113 Citigroup C2it, 177 eBay Billpoint tactics, 209–210 eBay buyout of PayPal, 289 eBay “Checkout” feature, 231 Elon Musk’s departure, 177–178 negative, towards PayPal, 179–180, 293–294 PayPal anti-fraud measures, 202–203 PayPal at eBay Live, 275 PayPal IPO, 224–225, 236 PayPal sales of shares, 246–247 positive, towards PayPal, 178 startups, 178–180, 310 town named after startup, 132 meetings communication by, at eBay, 297–298 at Confinity, 24–25 fine for latecomers at PayPal, 197 Melton, Bill, 10 merchant services team at PayPal, 212, 260 mergers and acquisitions Confinity and X.com, 69, 72–73 difficulties from, 113 by eBay, 307 PayPal and eBay, 302 message boards adding to PayPal site, 139 as customer service solution, 101, 107–108, 138–139 “damage control” on, 127 Metcalfe’s law, 42 Microsoft eBay’s tactics compared with, 205, 231 PayPal as “Microsoft of payments,” 26 “Million Auction March,” 186 mission PayPal, 26, 28 PayPal, difference from eBay’s, 307 . See also business models money market feature, PayPal, 181 money request tools, PayPal, 38, 39 Moritz, Mike, 161, 179 Mountain View, California, 262 multi-payments tool, 135 Musk, Elon advice about eBay buyout offer, 238 background, 40 cashflow crisis approach, 136–137 collaboration with David Sacks, 110–111 decision to switch to Windows NT, 143, 144, 153–154, 160 fondness for “X,” 128, 129, 131 leave taking from X.com (PayPal), 163 life after PayPal, 312 management style, 130 order to eliminate PayPal name, 155 order to stop PayPal user survey, 156 ouster from X.com (PayPal), 157–162, 177 position in X.com (PayPal), 70 public image, 71, 111 push for fee transactions, 149–150 replacement of Bill Harris, 111–112 response to fraud concerns, 160 speech after Confinity and X.com merger, 77 transaction guarantee rollout, 137–138 venture financing by, 148–149 Napster, 164 Nasdaq collapse.

The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats
by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake
Published 15 Jul 2019

“So I predicted Utopia, hoping to give Liberty a running start before the laws of Moore and Metcalfe delivered up what Ed Snowden now correctly calls ‘turn-key totalitarianism.’” What Barlow saw, and captured in his elegant turn of phrase, was that the growth of processing power (Moore’s Law) together with the growth in value of a connected network (Metcalfe’s Law) would inevitably mean that the internet would be used as a surveillance tool rather than as a space where people were, in fact, more free. Yet what Barlow recognized was what many in the military community have also recognized: cyberspace is the only changeable, man-made domain. While the laws of physics do apply in cyberspace, they are guideposts.

…

Would the activity being attempted damage the network or security safeguards on the network? These products are learning patterns, rather than applying blacklists, and modifying their behavior as they learn. This software learns not just from what it sees on its endpoint, not just from what happens on other endpoints on the network, but, in a classic example of Metcalfe’s law, they learn from every endpoint on every network on which they are deployed. A second widespread use of AI today is in applications known as vulnerability managers. AI can intake machine-readable intelligence reports on new threats and can automatically prioritize those threats based upon what it already knows or can quickly find out about your network.

…

., 6, 61, 153, 286 Cyber War, 6–7, 13, 26, 37, 78, 192, 200 Koppel, Ted, 155–57 Kurtz, George, 34 Levy, Steven, 207 Lewis, Jim, 89 Lights Out (Koppel), 157 Livingston, John, 271–75 Lockheed Martin, 49–52 Long, Fan, 80 Longhorn, 24, 37 L0pht, 78, 79, 119 machine learning (ML), 42, 53, 80, 81, 243–52, 263–64, 304 see also artificial intelligence Madam Secretary, 157, 161 Maersk, 19, 29, 37 Malik, Tashfeen, 123–25 malware, 46, 53–55, 59–61, 79, 85, 86, 149, 304 managed security service provider (MSSP), 144, 229, 304 Manhattan Project, 9 Mansouri, Mohammad, 126 Markoff, Michele, 210 Marsh, Robert, 88–89 Martin, Harold, 22–23 Mastercard, 152, 153 Mattis, James, 195 McAfee, 33, 61, 67, 251, 288 McAuliffe, Terry, 230–31 McGeehan, Ryan, 71 McKinsey & Company, 8, 271 McLaughlin, Mark, 60–61 medical devices, 275–76, 278–79 Merck, 19, 29, 37 Metcalfe’s Law, 209–10, 245 Mickens, James, 44 microphones, 290 Microsoft, 8, 18, 20–22, 24, 36, 37, 44, 74–76, 81, 129, 131, 152, 213, 253, 261, 285 Windows, 18, 36, 79, 129, 190, 276, 288 military, 11–12, 13, 87, 95, 150, 161, 163, 181–203 Air Force, 50, 102, 166, 183 Army, 150, 170, 183, 195 cybersecurity training and, 143, 147–48 Navy, 95, 150, 163, 183, 189–90, 198, 200, 201 see also Defense Department Mirai, 119, 277 missiles, 165–66, 303 MIT, 80, 152, 169, 263 MITRE Corporation, 55–58, 60, 112 mobile devices, 289–90, 292 5G and, 265–69, 280 Mohammadi, Ehsan, 28 Mollenkopf, Steve, 265 Mondelēz, 19, 37, 121 Moore’s Law, 209–10 Morenets, Alexei, 28 Moss, Jeff, 127, 295 Mossad, 44, 46 Mueller, Robert, 161 multifactor authentication (MFA), 46, 129, 131–34, 137, 304 Murphy, Matt, 181 mutual legal assistance treaties, 215 NAFTA, 213 Nakasone, Paul, 233 NASA, 79, 169, 263 Nash, Lorina, 17 National Academy of Sciences, 3 National Cybersecurity Protection System, 96 National Cyber Strategy, 92, 182 National Defense Authorization Act, 195–96 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), 64–65, 140, 261, 304 Cybersecurity Framework, 44–45, 66, 70, 111, 117 cybersecurity workforce crisis and, 144–45 National Plan for Information Systems Protection, 109 National Science Foundation, 168 national security, 88, 90, 94, 104–5, 153 National Security Agency (NSA), 18, 21–23, 35–37, 43, 68, 73, 93, 96, 103, 124, 125, 168, 189, 194, 200, 233, 254, 267 Tailored Access Operations, 73, 148, 307 National Security Council (NSC), 6, 89, 97, 102, 110, 111, 203, 222, 224 National Security Presidential Memorandum 13, 182, 196 National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), 111–12, 134–36, 138 National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, 156 National Transportation Safety Board, 273 NATO, 221, 222, 225, 234 natural gas, 272–73 Navy, U.S., 95, 150, 163, 183, 189–90, 198, 200, 201 Navy Marine Corps Intranet, 27 NeSmith, Brian, 144 Netflix, 72, 76 Network Master, 246, 248, 252, 263, 264 neural networks, 80, 243–44 New York, 117, 123, 155–56, 174 New York Cyber Task Force, 75, 101–4 New York Times, 205 New York Times Magazine, 219 Niejelow, Alex, 153 Nikias, C.

Think Like a Freak
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Published 11 May 2014

It was written by Paul Krugman, himself an economist, who went on to win the Nobel Prize.* Krugman points out that too many economists’ predictions fail because they overestimate the impact of future technologies, and then he makes a few predictions of his own. Here’s one: “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

…

., as quitter, 205–8 licensing, 51 life insurance, and terrorists, 163–65 limits: accepting or rejecting, 62, 63–64 artificial, 63, 64 lottery: no-lose, 98–99 state monopolies, 99 loved-one relationships, 125–26 Luther, Martin, 70–72 M&M’s: bribing a child with, 105–6 in contract clause, 141–42 magic: and adults, 102–3 and children, 101–4 double lift, 101–2 and perception, 101 watching from below, 103–4 manipulation, 134 Mao Tse-tung, 127 marathons, 204–5 marriage, and happiness, 8–9 Marshall, Barry, 79–83, 84–85, 94–95 MBA, cost of, 191 McAfee anti-virus software, 159 McAuliffe, Christa, 197 McDonald, Allan, 197–98 measurement, 8 medicine: blockbuster drugs, 79 causes of illness, 83 and folklore, 78, 80 heart disease, 75, 77 tradition in, 82 ulcers, 78–86, 94–95 memories, negative, 180 Meng Zhao, 91 Metcalfe’s law, 26 Mexico City, pollution in, 131 microbial cloud, 83 middle ground, choosing, 7 milk necklace, weight of, 107 money: as incentive, 107–11, 113, 133 saving, 97–99 spending, 98–99 throwing good after bad, 191 monopolies, lotteries as, 99 moral compass, 31–34 and suicide, 32–34 moral incentives, 112–16, 135 Morton Thiokol, 197–98 Moses, story of, 187 Mullaney, Brian, 117–25, 130 Myhrvold, Nathan, 195 name-calling, 180–81 NASA, 197–98 Nathan (prophet), 187–88 Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest, 53–61 National Health Service (NHS), 14–16 natural experiments, 40 negative memories, 180 negative thinking, 64 Newton, Sir Isaac, 89 New York Times, 209 Nicklaus, Jack, 205 Nigerian scam, 154–61, 162 Nixon, Richard M., 127 Nobel Prizes, 25n, 83 no one left to blame, 33–34 “nudge” movement, 172 obesity, 107–8, 182–83 obvious, 65, 92–93, 100 Ohtahara syndrome, 14–15 online gambling, 99–100 Operation Smile, 118–19 opinion, 10, 20, 171–73 opportunity cost, 191–92, 199 overthinking, 103 Palestine, and bullet factory, 152–54 parents: and crime prevention, 70 learning from, 50 and traffic accidents, 178 Park, Albert, 91 patents, 193 Peace of Augsburg, 71 penalty kick (soccer), 3–7, 29 perception, 101 peritonitis, 79 perspective, 104 persuasion: difficulty of, 167–73 it’s not me, 173 name-calling, 180–81 new technology, 174–77 “nudge” movement, 172 opponent’s strength, 177–79 perfect solution, 173–74 storytelling, 181–88 Peru, slavery in, 74 Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, 115–16 philanthropy, 73 Ping-Pong, 127 planos (glasses with plain lenses), 92n policymakers, 97 political predictions, 23–24, 171 pollution, 131–33, 176 pooling equilibrium, 143 Porter, Roy, 78 postmortem, 199 poverty: causes of, 66 health and education, 75 practice, importance of, 96 predictions: accuracy of, 24 difficult, 23, 176 dogmatism in, 25 economic, 25–27 end of the world, 30 inaccurate, punishments for, 30–31 incentives for, 29–30 in politics, 23–24, 171 of stock markets, 24–25, 29–30 of store opening, 196–97 by witches, 30–31 preferences, declared vs. revealed, 112 premortem, anonymous, 199 pretense, 104 priestly rigging, 146–47, 148–49, 152, 154 private benefit vs. greater good, 7, 29 private-equity firms, 70 prize-linked savings (PLS) account, 98–99 problem solving: asking the wrong questions in, 49–50, 62 attacking the noisy part, 51 barriers to, 63–64 in complex issues, 23, 35, 66–67, 89–90 difficulty of, 2 in eating contests, 53–61 economic approach to, 9 education reform, 50–52 experiments in, see experiments generating ideas, 87–88 incentives understood in, 8 and moral compass, 31–34 negative thinking in, 64 obvious cause, 65, 92–93 “perfect” solution, 173–74 redefining the problem, 52, 61–62 “right” vs.

The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine
by Peter Lunenfeld
Published 31 Mar 2011

The cyberpunk maxim that “the street finds its own uses for technology” often enters the discussion at this point. In other words, the intention of the makers is frequently contradicted by the choices of the users, and as more users enter a network, Metcalfe’s law indicates that they will be affecting it geometrically. I would propose a corollary of Metcalfe’s law that applies to theories of technology as much as the original does to the technologies themselves. Metcalfe’s corollary would be that ideas about the way technologies operate become that much stronger the more they are sited throughout the user bases of those technologies.

How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets
by Andy Kessler
Published 13 Jun 2005

The official definition of Metcalfe's Law is: The value of a network grows as the square of the number of its users. Actually, for those keeping track at home, it’s n*(n-1). A single node has no connections, two nodes have 2 connections, one in either direction, three nodes have 6, etc. This becomes the scale of the Web when millions of nodes are connected, and Metcalfe’s Law is what made Napster and peer-to-peer file sharing such a huge phenomenon. Bob told me, “Unlike Moore's Law, Metcalfe's Law has never been actually numerically true. It's a vision thing. You can quote me.” *** Local area networks, LANs, became extremely popular in hooking up mainframes and minicomputers.

…

Unlike Wall Street putting up capital to provide liquidity, size equated to liquidity. The community of users provided a liquid market, maybe 100 shares at a time, but liquidity nonetheless. Think Ebay or Instant Messaging, worthless with a handful of users, but unspeakably powerful platforms with millions of users. Metcalfe’s Law at work! The number of users matters, and trumps whatever capital a Wall Street firm could throw at the problem. *** While NASDAQ volumes rose with cheaper trading via ECNs, the Big Board felt threatened. Traders there clung dearly to that “no trading outside the exchange” culture. Barely 10-15% of Big Board volume was done off exchange.

Who Owns the Future?
by Jaron Lanier
Published 6 May 2013

It attracted people because of the people already on it, a little like the old joke about someone being famous for being famous. *Network effects were an obsession for those interested in the pre-digital phone system. They have become an even greater obsession in the age of digital networks. Metcalf’s Law is a famous claim that a network becomes as valuable as the square of the number of its nodes. That means value climbs with an insane, ever-increasing pitch as a network grows. The economist W. Brian Arthur pioneered the understanding of economic network effects. To understand how Siren Servers work, it’s useful to divide network effects into those that are “rewarding” and those that are “punishing.”

…

To kick the economy to the next peak in the energy landscape, great scale is needed, more scale than any one company or financial player can provide. The Apple Store and the Amazon store can’t grow as much, and as fast separately as they could together in a universal market. To understand why, recall some basic algebra. Start with Metcalf’s Law, which states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes. The square of the number of Apple users plus the square of the number of Amazon users is far less than the square of the combined user base. So, the moguls might realize that it makes sense to work together, in a general sort of way that increases competition but increases scale and opportunity even more.

…

., 296, 298 lawyers, 98–99, 100, 136, 184, 318–19 leadership, 341–51 legacy prices, 272–75, 288 legal issues, 49, 63, 74–82, 98–99, 100, 104–5, 108, 136, 184, 204, 206, 318–19 Lehman Brothers, 188 lemonade stands, 79–82 “lemons,” 118–19 Lennon, John, 211, 213 levees, economic, 43–45, 46, 47, 48, 49–50, 52, 92, 94, 96, 98, 108, 171, 176n, 224–25, 239–43, 253–54, 263, 345 leveraged mortgages, 49–50, 61, 227, 245, 289n, 296 liberal arts, 97 liberalism, 135–36, 148, 152, 202, 204, 208, 235, 236, 251, 253, 256, 265, 293, 350 libertarianism, 14, 34, 80, 202, 208, 210, 262, 321 liberty, 13–15, 32–33, 90–92, 277–78, 336 licensing agreements, 79–82 “Lifestreams” (Gelernter), 313 Lights in the Tunnel, The (Ford), 56n Linux, 206, 253, 291, 344 litigation, 98–99, 100, 104–5, 108, 184 loans, 32–33, 42, 43, 74, 151–52, 306 local advantages, 64, 94–95, 143–44, 153–56, 173, 203, 280 Local/Global Flip, 153–56, 173, 280 locked-in software, 172–73, 182, 273–74 logical copies, 223 Long-Term Capital Management, 49, 74–75 looms, 22, 23n, 24 loopholes, tax, 77 lotteries, 338–39 lucid dreaming, 162 Luddites, 135, 136 lyres, 22, 23n, 24 machines, 19–20, 86, 92, 123, 129–30, 158, 261, 309–11, 328 see also computers “Machine Stops, The” (Forster), 129–30, 261, 328 machine translations, 19–20 machine vision, 309–11 McMillen, Keith, 117 magic, 110, 115, 151, 178, 216, 338 Malthus, Thomas, 132, 134 Malthusian humor, 125, 127, 132–33 management, 49 manufacturing sector, 49, 85–89, 99, 123, 154, 343 market economies, see economies, market marketing, 211–13, 266–67, 306, 346 “Markets for Lemons” problem, 118–19 Markoff, John, 213 marriage, 167–68, 274–75, 286 Marxism, 15, 22, 37–38, 48, 136–37, 262 as humor, 126 mash-ups, 191, 221, 224–26, 259 Maslow, Abraham, 260, 315 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 75, 93, 94, 96–97, 157–58, 184 mass media, 7, 66, 86, 109, 120, 135, 136, 185–86, 191, 216, 267 material extinction, 125 materialism, 125n, 195 mathematics, 11, 20, 40–41, 70, 71–72, 75–78, 116, 148, 155, 161, 189n, 273n see also statistics Matrix, The, 130, 137, 155 Maxwell, James Clerk, 55 Maxwell’s Demon, 55–56 mechanicals, 49, 51n Mechanical Turk, 177–78, 185, 187, 349 Medicaid, 99 medicine, 11–13, 17, 18, 54, 66–67, 97–106, 131, 132–33, 134, 150, 157–58, 325, 346, 363, 366–67 Meetings with Remarkable Men (Gurdjieff), 215 mega-dossiers, 60 memes, 124 Memex, 221n memories, 131, 312–13, 314 meta-analysis, 112 metaphysics, 12, 127, 139, 193–95 Metcalf’s Law, 169n, 350 Mexico City, 159–62 microfilm, 221n microorganisms, 162 micropayments, 20, 226, 274–75, 286–87, 317, 337–38, 365 Microsoft, 19, 89, 265 Middle Ages, 190 middle class, 2, 3, 9, 11, 16–17, 37–38, 40, 42–45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 60, 74, 79, 91, 92, 95, 98, 171, 205, 208, 210, 224–25, 239–43, 246, 253–54, 259, 262, 263, 280, 291–94, 331, 341n, 344, 345, 347, 354 milling machines, 86 mind reading, 111 Minority Report, 130, 310 Minsky, Marvin, 94, 157–58, 217, 326, 330–31 mission statements, 154–55 Mixed (Augmented) Reality, 312–13, 314, 315 mobile phones, 34n, 39, 85, 87, 162, 172, 182n, 192, 229, 269n, 273, 314, 315, 331 models, economic, 40–41, 148–52, 153, 155–56 modernity, 123–40, 193–94, 255 molds, 86 monetization, 172, 176n, 185, 186, 207, 210, 241–43, 255–56, 258, 260–61, 263, 298, 331, 338, 344–45 money, 3, 21, 29–35, 86, 108, 124, 148, 152, 154, 155, 158, 172, 185, 241–43, 278–79, 284–85, 289, 364 monocultures, 94 monopolies, 60, 65–66, 169–74, 181–82, 187–88, 190, 202, 326, 350 Moondust, 362n Moore’s Law, 9–18, 20, 153, 274–75, 288 morality, 29–34, 35, 42, 50–52, 54, 71–74, 188, 194–95, 252–64, 335–36 Morlocks, 137 morning-after pill, 104 morphing, 162 mortality, 193, 218, 253, 263–64, 325–31, 367 mortgages, 33, 46, 49–52, 61, 78, 95–96, 99, 224, 227, 239, 245, 255, 274n, 289n, 296, 300 motivation, 7–18, 85–86, 97–98, 216 motivational speakers, 216 movies, 111–12, 130, 137, 165, 192, 193, 204, 206, 256, 261–62, 277–78, 310 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 23n MRI, 111n music industry, 11, 18, 22, 23–24, 42, 47–51, 54, 61, 66, 74, 78, 86, 88, 89, 92, 94, 95–96, 97, 129, 132, 134–35, 154, 157, 159–62, 186–87, 192, 206–7, 224, 227, 239, 253, 266–67, 281, 318, 347, 353, 354, 355, 357 Myspace, 180 Nancarrow, Conlon, 159–62 Nancarrow, Yoko, 161 nanopayments, 20, 226, 274–75, 286–87, 317, 337–38, 365 nanorobots, 11, 12, 17 nanotechnology, 11, 12, 17, 87, 162 Napster, 92 narcissism, 153–56, 188, 201 narratives, 165–66, 199 National Security Agency (NSA), 199–200 natural medicine, 131 Nelson, Ted, 128, 221, 228, 245, 349–50 Nelsonian systems, 221–30, 335 Nelson’s humor, 128 Netflix, 192, 223 “net neutrality,” 172 networked cameras, 309–11, 319 networks, see digital networks neutrinos, 110n New Age, 211–17 Newmark, Craig, 177n New Mexico, 159, 203 newspapers, 109, 135, 177n, 225, 284, 285n New York, N.Y., 75, 91, 266–67 New York Times, 109 Nobel Prize, 40, 118, 143n nodes, network, 156, 227, 230, 241–43, 350 “no free lunch” principle, 55–56, 59–60 nondeterministic music, 23n nonlinear solutions, 149–50 nonprofit share sites, 59n, 94–95 nostalgia, 129–32 NRO, 199–200 nuclear power, 133 nuclear weapons, 127, 296 nursing, 97–100, 123, 296n nursing homes, 97–100, 269 Obama, Barack, 79, 100 “Obamacare,” 100n obsolescence, 89, 95 oil resources, 43, 133 online stores, 171 Ono, Yoko, 212 ontologies, 124n, 196 open-source applications, 206, 207, 272, 310–11 optical illusions, 121 optimism, 32–35, 45, 130, 138–40, 218, 230n, 295 optimization, 144–47, 148, 153, 154–55, 167, 202, 203 Oracle, 265 Orbitz, 63, 64, 65 organ donors, 190, 191 ouroboros, 154 outcomes, economic, 40–41, 144–45 outsourcing, 177–78, 185 Owens, Buck, 256 packet switching, 228–29 Palmer, Amanda, 186–87 Pandora, 192 panopticons, 308 papacy, 190 paper money, 34n parallel computers, 147–48, 149, 151 paranoia, 309 Parrish, Maxfield, 214 particle interactions, 196 party machines, 202 Pascal, Blaise, 132, 139 Pascal’s Wager, 139 passwords, 307, 309 “past-oriented money,” 29–31, 35, 284–85 patterns, information, 178, 183, 184, 188–89 Paul, Ron, 33n Pauli exclusion principle, 181, 202 PayPal, 60, 93, 326 peasants, 565 pensions, 95, 99 Perestroika (Kushner), 165 “perfect investments,” 59–67, 77–78 performances, musical, 47–48, 51, 186–87, 253 perpetual motion, 55 Persian Gulf, 86 personal computers (PCs), 158, 182n, 214, 223, 229 personal information systems, 110, 312–16, 317 Pfizer, 265 pharmaceuticals industry, 66–67, 100–106, 123, 136, 203 philanthropy, 117 photography, 53, 89n, 92, 94, 309–11, 318, 319, 321 photo-sharing services, 53 physical trades, 292 physicians, 66–67 physics, 88, 153n, 167n Picasso, Pablo, 108 Pinterest, 180–81, 183 Pirate Party, 49, 199, 206, 226, 253, 284, 318 placebos, 112 placement fees, 184 player pianos, 160–61 plutocracy, 48, 291–94, 355 police, 246, 310, 311, 319–21, 335 politics, 13–18, 21, 22–25, 47–48, 85, 122, 124–26, 128, 134–37, 149–51, 155, 167, 199–234, 295–96, 342 see also conservatism; liberalism; libertarianism Ponzi schemes, 48 Popper, Karl, 189n popular culture, 111–12, 130, 137–38, 139, 159 “populating the stack,” 273 population, 17, 34n, 86, 97–100, 123, 125, 132, 133, 269, 296n, 325–26, 346 poverty, 37–38, 42, 44, 53–54, 93–94, 137, 148, 167, 190, 194, 253, 256, 263, 290, 291–92 power, personal, 13–15, 53, 60, 62–63, 86, 114, 116, 120, 122, 158, 166, 172–73, 175, 190, 199, 204, 207, 208, 278–79, 290, 291, 302–3, 308–9, 314, 319, 326, 344, 360 Presley, Elvis, 211 Priceline, 65 pricing strategies, 1–2, 43, 60–66, 72–74, 145, 147–48, 158, 169–74, 226, 261, 272–75, 289, 317–24, 331, 337–38 printers, 90, 99, 154, 162, 212, 269, 310–11, 316, 331, 347, 348, 349 privacy, 1–2, 11, 13–15, 25, 50–51, 64, 99, 108–9, 114–15, 120–21, 152, 177n, 199–200, 201, 204, 206–7, 234–35, 246, 272, 291, 305, 309–13, 314, 315–16, 317, 319–24 privacy rights, 13–15, 25, 204, 305, 312–13, 314, 315–16, 321–22 product design and development, 85–89, 117–20, 128, 136–37, 145, 154, 236 productivity, 7, 56–57, 134–35 profit margins, 59n, 71–72, 76–78, 94–95, 116, 177n, 178, 179, 207, 258, 274–75, 321–22 progress, 9–18, 20, 21, 37, 43, 48, 57, 88, 98, 123, 124–40, 130–37, 256–57, 267, 325–31, 341–42 promotions, 62 property values, 52 proprietary hardware, 172 provenance, 245–46, 247, 338 pseudo-asceticism, 211–12 public libraries, 293 public roads, 79–80 publishers, 62n, 92, 182, 277–78, 281, 347, 352–60 punishing vs. rewarding network effects, 169–74, 182, 183 quants, 75–76 quantum field theory, 167n, 195 QuNeo, 117, 118, 119 Rabois, Keith, 185 “race to the bottom,” 178 radiant risk, 61–63, 118–19, 120, 156, 183–84 Ragnarok, 30 railroads, 43, 172 Rand, Ayn, 167, 204 randomness, 143 rationality, 144 Reagan, Ronald, 149 real estate, 33, 46, 49–52, 61, 78, 95–96, 99, 193, 224, 227, 239, 245, 255, 274n, 289n, 296, 298, 300, 301 reality, 55–56, 59–60, 124n, 127–28, 154–56, 161, 165–68, 194–95, 203–4, 216–17, 295–303, 364–65 see also Virtual Reality (VR) reason, 195–96 recessions, economic, 31, 54, 60, 76–77, 79, 151–52, 167, 204, 311, 336–37 record labels, 347 recycling, 88, 89 Reddit, 118n, 186, 254 reductionism, 184 regulation, economic, 37–38, 44, 45–46, 49–50, 54, 56, 69–70, 77–78, 266n, 274, 299–300, 311, 321–22, 350–51 relativity theory, 167n religion, 124–25, 126, 131, 139, 190, 193–95, 211–17, 293, 300n, 326 remote computers, 11–12 rents, 144 Republican Party, 79, 202 research and development, 40–45, 85–89, 117–20, 128, 136–37, 145, 154, 215, 229–30, 236 retail sector, 69, 70–74, 95–96, 169–74, 272, 349–51, 355–56 retirement, 49, 150 revenue growth plans, 173n revenues, 149, 149, 150, 151, 173n, 225, 234–35, 242, 347–48 reversible computers, 143n revolutions, 199, 291, 331 rhythm, 159–62 Rich Dad, Poor Dad (Kiyosaki), 46 risk, 54, 55, 57, 59–63, 71–72, 85, 117, 118–19, 120, 156, 170–71, 179, 183–84, 188, 242, 277–81, 284, 337, 350 externalization of, 59n, 117, 277–81 risk aversion, 188 risk pools, 277–81, 284 risk radiation, 61–63, 118–19, 120, 156, 183–84 robo call centers, 177n robotic cars, 90–92 robotics, robots, 11, 12, 17, 23, 42, 55, 85–86, 90–92, 97–100, 111, 129, 135–36, 155, 157, 162, 260, 261, 269, 296n, 342, 359–60 Roman Empire, 24–25 root nodes, 241 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 129 Rousseau humor, 126, 129, 130–31 routers, 171–72 royalties, 47, 240, 254, 263–64, 323, 338 Rubin, Edgar, 121 rupture, 66–67 salaries, 10, 46–47, 50–54, 152, 178, 270–71, 287–88, 291–94, 338–39, 365 sampling, 71–72, 191, 221, 224–26, 259 San Francisco, University of, 190 satellites, 110 savings, 49, 72–74 scalable solutions, 47 scams, 119–21, 186, 275n, 287–88, 299–300 scanned books, 192, 193 SceneTap, 108n Schmidt, Eric, 305n, 352 Schwartz, Peter, 214 science fiction, 18, 126–27, 136, 137–38, 139, 193, 230n, 309, 356n search engines, 51, 60, 70, 81, 120, 191, 267, 289, 293 Second Life, 270, 343 Secret, The (Byrne), 216 securitization, 76–78, 99, 289n security, 14–15, 175, 239–40, 305–8, 345 self-actualization, 211–17 self-driving vehicles, 90–92, 98, 311, 343, 367 servants, 22 servers, 12n, 15, 31, 53–57, 71–72, 95–96, 143–44, 171, 180, 183, 206, 245, 358 see also Siren Servers “Sexy Sadie,” 213 Shakur, Tupac, 329 Shelley, Mary, 327 Short History of Progress, A (Wright), 132 “shrinking markets,” 66–67 shuttles, 22, 23n, 24 signal-processing algorithms, 76–78, 148 silicon chips, 10, 86–87 Silicon Valley, 12, 13, 14, 21, 34n, 56, 59, 60, 66–67, 70, 71, 75–76, 80, 93, 96–97, 100, 102, 108n, 125n, 132, 136, 154, 157, 162, 170, 179–89, 192, 193, 200, 207, 210, 211–18, 228, 230, 233, 258, 275n, 294, 299–300, 325–31, 345, 349, 352, 354–58 singularity, 22–25, 125, 215, 217, 327–28, 366, 367 Singularity University, 193, 325, 327–28 Sirenic Age, 66n, 354 Siren Servers, 53–57, 59, 61–64, 65, 66n, 69–78, 82, 91–99, 114–19, 143–48, 154–56, 166–89, 191, 200, 201, 203, 210n, 216, 235, 246–50, 258, 259, 269, 271, 272, 280, 285, 289, 293–94, 298, 301, 302–3, 307–10, 314–23, 326, 336–51, 354, 365, 366 Siri, 95 skilled labor, 99–100 Skout, 280n Skype, 95, 129 slavery, 22, 23, 33n Sleeper, 130 small businesses, 173 smartphones, 34n, 39, 162, 172, 192, 269n, 273 Smith, Adam, 121, 126 Smolin, Lee, 148n social contract, 20, 49, 247, 284, 288, 335, 336 social engineering, 112–13, 190–91 socialism, 14, 128, 254, 257, 341n social mobility, 66, 97, 292–94 social networks, 18, 51, 56, 60, 70, 81, 89, 107–9, 113, 114, 129, 167–68, 172–73, 179, 180, 190, 199, 200–201, 202, 204, 227, 241, 242–43, 259, 267, 269n, 274–75, 280n, 286, 307–8, 317, 336, 337, 343, 349, 358, 365–66 see also Facebook social safety nets, 10, 44, 54, 202, 251, 293 Social Security, 251, 345 software, 7, 9, 11, 14, 17, 68, 86, 99, 100–101, 128, 129, 147, 154, 155, 165, 172–73, 177–78, 182, 192, 234, 236, 241–42, 258, 262, 273–74, 283, 331, 347, 357 software-mediated technology, 7, 11, 14, 86, 100–101, 165, 234, 236, 258, 347 South Korea, 133 Soviet Union, 70 “space elevator pitch,” 233, 342, 361 space travel, 233, 266 Spain, 159–60 spam, 178, 275n spending levels, 287–88 spirituality, 126, 211–17, 325–31, 364 spreadsheet programs, 230 “spy data tax,” 234–35 Square, 185 Stalin, Joseph, 125n Stanford Research Institute (SRI), 215 Stanford University, 60, 75, 90, 95, 97, 101, 102, 103, 162, 325 Starr, Ringo, 256 Star Trek, 138, 139, 230n startup companies, 39, 60, 69, 93–94, 108n, 124n, 136, 179–89, 265, 274n, 279–80, 309–10, 326, 341, 343–45, 348, 352, 355 starvation, 123 Star Wars, 137 star (winner-take-all) system, 38–43, 50, 54–55, 204, 243, 256–57, 263, 329–30 statistics, 11, 20, 71–72, 75–78, 90–91, 93, 110n, 114–15, 186, 192 “stickiness,” 170, 171 stimulus, economic, 151–52 stoplights, 90 Strangelove humor, 127 student debt, 92, 95 “Study 27,” 160 “Study 36,” 160 Sumer, 29 supergoop, 85–89 supernatural phenomena, 55, 124–25, 127, 132, 192, 194–95, 300 supply chain, 70–72, 174, 187 Supreme Court, U.S., 104–5 surgery, 11–13, 17, 18, 98, 157–58, 363 surveillance, 1–2, 11, 14, 50–51, 64, 71–72, 99, 108–9, 114–15, 120–21, 152, 177n, 199–200, 201, 206–7, 234–35, 246, 272, 291, 305, 309–11, 315, 316, 317, 319–24 Surviving Progress, 132 sustainable economies, 235–37, 285–87 Sutherland, Ivan, 221 swarms, 99, 109 synthesizers, 160 synthetic biology, 162 tablets, 85, 86, 87, 88, 113, 162, 229 Tahrir Square, 95 Tamagotchis, 98 target ads, 170 taxation, 44, 45, 49, 52, 60, 74–75, 77, 82, 149, 149, 150, 151, 202, 210, 234–35, 263, 273, 289–90 taxis, 44, 91–92, 239, 240, 266–67, 269, 273, 311 Teamsters, 91 TechCrunch, 189 tech fixes, 295–96 technical schools, 96–97 technologists (“techies”), 9–10, 15–16, 45, 47–48, 66–67, 88, 122, 124, 131–32, 134, 139–40, 157–62, 165–66, 178, 193–94, 295–98, 307, 309, 325–31, 341, 342, 356n technology: author’s experience in, 47–48, 62n, 69–72, 93–94, 114, 130, 131–32, 153, 158–62, 178, 206–7, 228, 265, 266–67, 309–10, 325, 328, 343, 352–53, 362n, 364, 365n, 366 bio-, 11–13, 17, 18, 109–10, 162, 330–31 chaos and, 165–66, 273n, 331 collusion in, 65–66, 72, 169–74, 255, 350–51 complexity of, 53–54 costs of, 8, 18, 72–74, 87n, 136–37, 170–71, 176–77, 184–85 creepiness of, 305–24 cultural impact of, 8–9, 21, 23–25, 53, 130, 135–40 development and emergence of, 7–18, 21, 53–54, 60–61, 66–67, 85–86, 87, 97–98, 129–38, 157–58, 182, 188–90, 193–96, 217 digital, 2–3, 7–8, 15–16, 18, 31, 40, 43, 50–51, 132, 208 economic impact of, 1–3, 15–18, 29–30, 37, 40, 53–54, 60–66, 71–74, 79–110, 124, 134–37, 161, 162, 169–77, 181–82, 183, 184–85, 218, 254, 277–78, 298, 335–39, 341–51, 357–58 educational, 92–97 efficiency of, 90, 118, 191 employment in, 56–57, 60, 71–74, 79, 123, 135, 178 engineering for, 113–14, 123–24, 192, 194, 217, 218, 326 essential vs. worthless, 11–12 failure of, 188–89 fear of (technophobia), 129–32, 134–38 freedom as issue in, 32–33, 90–92, 277–78, 336 government influence in, 158, 199, 205–6, 234–35, 240, 246, 248–51, 307, 317, 341, 345–46, 350–51 human agency and, 8–21, 50–52, 85, 88, 91, 124–40, 144, 165–66, 175–78, 191–92, 193, 217, 253–64, 274–75, 283–85, 305–6, 328, 341–51, 358–60, 361, 362, 365–67 ideas for, 123, 124, 158, 188–89, 225, 245–46, 286–87, 299, 358–60 industrial, 49, 83, 85–89, 123, 132, 154, 343 information, 7, 32–35, 49, 66n, 71–72, 109, 110, 116, 120, 125n, 126, 135, 136, 254, 312–16, 317 investment in, 66, 181, 183, 184, 218, 277–78, 298, 348 limitations of, 157–62, 196, 222 monopolies for, 60, 65–66, 169–74, 181–82, 187–88, 190, 202, 326, 350 morality and, 50–51, 72, 73–74, 188, 194–95, 262, 335–36 motivation and, 7–18, 85–86, 97–98, 216 nano-, 11, 12, 17, 162 new vs. old, 20–21 obsolescence of, 89, 97 political impact of, 13–18, 22–25, 85, 122, 124–26, 128, 134–37, 199–234, 295–96, 342 progress in, 9–18, 20, 21, 37, 43, 48, 57, 88, 98, 123, 124–40, 130–37, 256–57, 267, 325–31, 341–42 resources for, 55–56, 157–58 rupture as concept in, 66–67 scams in, 119–21, 186, 275n, 287–88, 299–300 singularity of, 22–25, 125, 215, 217, 327–28, 366, 367 social impact of, 9–21, 124–40, 167n, 187, 280–81, 310–11 software-mediated, 7, 11, 14, 86, 100–101, 165, 234, 236, 258, 347 startup companies in, 39, 60, 69, 93–94, 108n, 124n, 136, 179–89, 265, 274n, 279–80, 309–10, 326, 341, 343–45, 348, 352, 355 utopian, 13–18, 21, 31, 37–38, 45–46, 96, 128, 130, 167, 205, 207, 265, 267, 270, 283, 290, 291, 308–9, 316 see also specific technologies technophobia, 129–32, 134–38 television, 86, 185–86, 191, 216, 267 temperature, 56, 145 Ten Commandments, 300n Terminator, The, 137 terrorism, 133, 200 Tesla, Nikola, 327 Texas, 203 text, 162, 352–60 textile industry, 22, 23n, 24, 135 theocracy, 194–95 Theocracy humor, 124–25 thermodynamics, 88, 143n Thiel, Peter, 60, 93, 326 thought experiments, 55, 139 thought schemas, 13 3D printers, 7, 85–89, 90, 99, 154, 162, 212, 269, 310–11, 316, 331, 347, 348, 349 Thrun, Sebastian, 94 Tibet, 214 Time Machine, The (Wells), 127, 137, 261, 331 topology, network, 241–43, 246 touchscreens, 86 tourism, 79 Toyota Prius, 302 tracking services, 109, 120–21, 122 trade, 29 traffic, 90–92, 314 “tragedy of the commons,” 66n Transformers, 98 translation services, 19–20, 182, 191, 195, 261, 262, 284, 338 transparency, 63–66, 74–78, 118, 176, 190–91, 205–6, 278, 291, 306–9, 316, 336 transportation, 79–80, 87, 90–92, 123, 258 travel agents, 64 Travelocity, 65 travel sites, 63, 64, 65, 181, 279–80 tree-shaped networks, 241–42, 243, 246 tribal dramas, 126 trickle-down effect, 148–49, 204 triumphalism, 128, 157–62 tropes (humors), 124–40, 157, 170, 230 trust, 32–34, 35, 42, 51–52 Turing, Alan, 127–28, 134 Turing’s humor, 127–28, 191–94 Turing Test, 330 Twitter, 128, 173n, 180, 182, 188, 199, 200n, 201, 204, 245, 258, 259, 349, 365n 2001: A Space Odyssey, 137 two-way links, 1–2, 227, 245, 289 underemployment, 257–58 unemployment, 7–8, 22, 79, 85–106, 117, 151–52, 234, 257–58, 321–22, 331, 343 “unintentional manipulation,” 144 United States, 25, 45, 54, 79–80, 86, 138, 199–204 universities, 92–97 upper class, 45, 48 used car market, 118–19 user interface, 362–63, 364 utopianism, 13–18, 21, 30, 31, 37–38, 45–46, 96, 128, 130, 167, 205, 207, 265, 267, 270, 283, 290, 291, 308–9, 316 value, economic, 21, 33–35, 52, 61, 64–67, 73n, 108, 283–90, 299–300, 321–22, 364 value, information, 1–3, 15–16, 20, 210, 235–43, 257–58, 259, 261–63, 271–75, 321–24, 358–60 Values, Attitudes, and Lifestyles (VALS), 215 variables, 149–50 vendors, 71–74 venture capital, 66, 181, 218, 277–78, 298, 348 videos, 60, 100, 162, 185–86, 204, 223, 225, 226, 239, 240, 242, 245, 277, 287, 329, 335–36, 349, 354, 356 Vietnam War, 353n vinyl records, 89 viral videos, 185–86 Virtual Reality (VR), 12, 47–48, 127, 129, 132, 158, 162, 214, 283–85, 312–13, 314, 315, 325, 343, 356, 362n viruses, 132–33 visibility, 184, 185–86, 234, 355 visual cognition, 111–12 VitaBop, 100–106, 284n vitamins, 100–106 Voice, The, 185–86 “voodoo economics,” 149 voting, 122, 202–4, 249 Wachowski, Lana, 165 Wall Street, 49, 70, 76–77, 181, 184, 234, 317, 331, 350 Wal-Mart, 69, 70–74, 89, 174, 187, 201 Warhol, Andy, 108 War of the Worlds, The (Wells), 137 water supplies, 17, 18 Watts, Alan, 211–12 Wave, 189 wealth: aggregate or concentration of, 9, 42–43, 53, 60, 61, 74–75, 96, 97, 108, 115, 148, 157–58, 166, 175, 201, 202, 208, 234, 278–79, 298, 305, 335, 355, 360 creation of, 32, 33–34, 46–47, 50–51, 57, 62–63, 79, 92, 96, 120, 148–49, 210, 241–43, 270–75, 291–94, 338–39, 349 inequalities and redistribution of, 20, 37–45, 65–66, 92, 97, 144, 254, 256–57, 274–75, 286–87, 290–94, 298, 299–300 see also income levels weather forecasting, 110, 120, 150 weaving, 22, 23n, 24 webcams, 99, 245 websites, 80, 170, 200, 201, 343 Wells, H.

Bank 3.0: Why Banking Is No Longer Somewhere You Go but Something You Do
by Brett King
Published 26 Dec 2012

The time you have to adapt is shortening, and the impact to your business is increasingly disruptive. The longer you sit there telling yourself you have “time” before you have to change your approach to the business of banking, the more at risk your business is. By correlating Moore’s law, Gilder’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law, along with the psychology of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we get an unavoidable, unstoppable, and unquestionable impact on adoption rates for new, innovative technologies. For the last 100 years or more, time to adoption rates has been collapsing. The emergence of Moore’s Law led these adoption cycles to speed up, then the web again boosted the cycle.

…

Some of the more successful cloud initiatives in recent times are simple plays around online storage, data and transfer. Whether that be DropBox™, YouSendIt™, or the likes of Flickr, the cloud of data being stored, moved and managed is rapidly growing. This is not surprising. Data storage is abundant and cheap. We talked previously about Moore’s Law, and discussed briefly Metcalfe’s Law on networking and Gilder’s Law on growth in bandwidth and data-carrying capacity of networks. These all add up to a time soon when our devices are likely to be connected full-time with all the capacity in terms of storage capacity, data retrieval and transmission that we’d ever need. Once that occurs, it’s likely that we’ll abandon most of our local storage of data and files, and move to devices always connected to the cloud.

…

Low-Counter: Typically a desk station within a branch where the relationship manager can sit with customers and potential clients and advise them on available products and services. Lo-Fi Prototype: A simple method of prototyping products, interfaces or applications and testing with target customers or users. LIBOR: London Interbank Offered Rate LinkedIn: An online social network for business professionals. Metcalfe’s Law: Attributed to Robert Metcalfe, this law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2). MFI: Microfinance Institution—an alternate form of bank found in developing countries which provides microcredit lending.

The Middleman Economy: How Brokers, Agents, Dealers, and Everyday Matchmakers Create Value and Profit
by Marina Krakovsky
Published 14 Sep 2015

For example, when users can simultaneously be on two or more platforms (multihoming), a single platform need not prevail—so while SitterCity may have reached a tipping point, the matchmaking between parents and babysitters hasn’t tipped toward any one platform. 43.This statement is a corollary of the so-called Metcalfe’s Law, which postulates that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the network. We shouldn’t take this formula literally, and Bob Metcalfe himself has said that his point was to show a crossover point of cost and value, the critical mass of users before which a network doesn’t pay, rather than to tout the wondrous value of a large network.

…

We shouldn’t take this formula literally, and Bob Metcalfe himself has said that his point was to show a crossover point of cost and value, the critical mass of users before which a network doesn’t pay, rather than to tout the wondrous value of a large network. Regardless of the exact relationship, the basic idea that the value of a network grows at a faster rate than its size is well accepted. And if it is true, then the larger the network, the more attractive it becomes to new users. See Bob Briscoe, Andrew Odlyzko, and Benjamin Tilly, “Metcalfe’s Law Is Wrong,” IEEE Spectrum July 2006. 44.In Tennessee, where Stoxstill-Diggs works, anyone 18 or older with a high-school diploma can get a license by passing an exam after 60 hours of coursework. To affiliate with a brokerage, candidates need to take 30 more hours of classes. 45.The 90th percentile is $98,090, and the 75th is $65,100.

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models
by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann
Published 17 Jun 2019

But as each person gets a phone, the number of possible connections grows proportionally to the square of the number of phones (nodes). Two phones can make only one connection, five can make ten, and twelve can make sixty-six. Network Effects 2 phones = 1 connection 5 phones = 10 connections 12 phones = 66 connections This relationship, known as Metcalfe’s law, is named after Robert Metcalfe, the co-inventor of the networking technology Ethernet. It describes the nonlinear growth in network value when nodes are connected to one another. His law oversimplifies reality since it assumes that every node (or telephone in this case) has the same value to the network and that every node may want to contact every other, but nevertheless it serves as a decent model.

…

Figure 1: The Nuclear Fission Chain Reaction, guernseyDonkey.com, February 24, 2012. 43: Peter Leyden, “Historical Adoption Rates of Communication Technologies,” infographic. 44: Justin McCarthy, “Record-High 60% of Americans Support Same-Sex Marriage,” Gallup (May 19, 2015). 45: Adapted from a Creative Commons image. Woody993, “Diagram showing the network effect in a few simple phone networks,” Wikimedia Commons, May 31, 2011, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe’s_law#/media/File:Metcalfe-Network-Effect.svg [inactive]. 46: J. L. Westover, “The Butterfly Effect,” Mr. Lovenstein, https://www.mrlovenstein.com/comic/50. 52 and 47: Cartoons by Theresa McCracken. 48: Randall Munroe, “Fuck Grapefruit,” XKCD, https://xkcd.com/388. 49: Cartoon by Bradford Veley. 50: Adapted from Raiders of the Lost Ark, dir.

…

., 91 Kodak, 302–3, 308–10, 312 Koenigswald, Gustav Heinrich Ralph von, 50 Kohl’s, 15 Kopelman, Josh, 301 Korea, 229, 231, 235, 238 Kristof, Nicholas, 254 Krokodil, 49 Kruger, Justin, 269 Kuhn, Thomas, 24 Kutcher, Ashton, 121 labor market, 283–84 laggards, 116–17 landlords, 178, 179, 182, 188 Laplace, Pierre-Simon, 132 large numbers, law of, 143–44 Latané, Bibb, 259 late majority, 116–17 lateral thinking, 201 law of diminishing returns, 81–83 law of diminishing utility, 81–82 law of inertia, 102–3, 105–8, 110, 112, 113, 119, 120, 129, 290, 296 law of large numbers, 143–44 law of small numbers, 143, 144 Lawson, Jerry, 289 lawsuits, 231 leadership, 248, 255, 260, 265, 271, 275, 276, 278–80 learned helplessness, 22–23 learning, 262, 269, 295 from past events, 271–72 learning curve, 269 Le Chatelier, Henri-Louis, 193 Le Chatelier’s principle, 193–94 left to their own devices, 275 Leibniz, Gottfried, 291 lemons into lemonade, 121 Lernaean Hydra, 51 Levav, Jonathan, 63 lever, 78 leverage, 78–80, 83, 115 high-leverage activities, 79–81, 83, 107, 113 leveraged buyout, 79 leveraging up, 78–79 Levitt, Steven, 44–45 Levitt, Theodore, 296 Lewis, Michael, 289 Lichtenstein, Sarah, 17 lightning, 145 liking, 216–17, 220 Lincoln, Abraham, 97 Lindy effect, 105, 106, 112 line in the sand, 238 LinkedIn, 7 littering, 41, 42 Lloyd, William, 37 loans, 180, 182–83 lobbyists, 216, 306 local optimum, 195–96 lock-in, 305 lock in your gains, 90 long-term negative scenarios, 60 loose versus tight, in organizational culture, 274 Lorenz, Edward, 121 loss, 91 loss aversion, 90–91 loss leader strategy, 236–37 lost at sea, 68 lottery, 85–86, 126, 145 low-context communication, 273–74 low-hanging fruit, 81 loyalists versus mercenaries, 276–77 luck, 128 making your own, 122 luck surface area, 122, 124, 128 Luft, Joseph, 196 LuLaRoe, 217 lung cancer, 133–34, 173 Lyautey, Hubert, 276 Lyft, ix, 288 Madoff, Bernie, 232 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 291 magnets, 194 maker’s schedule versus manager’s schedule, 277–78 Making of Economic Society, The (Heilbroner), 49 mammograms, 160–61 management debt, 56 manager’s schedule versus maker’s schedule, 277–78 managing to the person, 255 Manhattan Project, 195 Man in the High Castle, The (Dick), 201 manipulative insincerity, 264 man-month, 279 Mansfield, Peter, 291 manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), 15 margin of error, 154 markets, 42–43, 46–47, 106 failure in, 47–49 labor, 283–84 market norms versus social norms, 222–24 market power, 283–85, 312 product/market fit, 292–96, 302 secondary, 281–82 winner-take-most, 308 marriage: divorce, 231, 305 same-sex, 117, 118 Maslow, Abraham, 177, 270–71 Maslow’s hammer, xi, 177, 255, 297, 317 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, 270–71 mathematics, ix–x, 3, 4, 132, 178 Singapore math, 23–24 matrices, 2 × 2, 125–26 consensus-contrarian, 285–86, 290 consequence-conviction, 265–66 Eisenhower Decision Matrix, 72–74, 89, 124, 125 of knowns and unknowns, 197–98 payoff, 212–15, 238 radical candor, 263–64 scatter plot on top of, 126 McCain, John, 241 mean, 146, 149, 151 regression to, 146, 286 standard deviation from, 149, 150–51, 154 variance from, 149 measles, 39, 40 measurable target, 49–50 median, 147 Medicare, 54–55 meetings, 113 weekly one-on-one, 262–63 Megginson, Leon, 101 mental models, vii–xii, 2, 3, 31, 35, 65, 131, 289, 315–17 mentorship, 23, 260, 262, 264, 265 mercenaries versus loyalists, 276–77 Merck, 283 merry-go-round, 108 meta-analysis, 172–73 Metcalfe, Robert, 118 Metcalfe’s law, 118 #MeToo movement, 113 metrics, 137 proxy, 139 Michaels, 15 Microsoft, 241 mid-mortems, 92 Miklaszewski, Jim, 196 Milgram, Stanley, 219, 220 military, 141, 229, 279, 294, 300 milkshakes, 297 Miller, Reggie, 246 Mills, Alan, 58 Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Dweck), 266 mindset, fixed, 266–67, 272 mindset, growth, 266–67 minimum viable product (MVP), 7–8, 81, 294 mirroring, 217 mission, 276 mission statement, 68 MIT, 53, 85 moats, 302–5, 307–8, 310, 312 mode, 147 Moltke, Helmuth von, 7 momentum, 107–10, 119, 129 Monday morning quarterbacking, 271 Moneyball (Lewis), 289 monopolies, 283, 285 Monte Carlo fallacy, 144 Monte Carlo simulation, 195 Moore, Geoffrey, 311 moral hazard, 43–45, 47 most respectful interpretation (MRI), 19–20 moths, 99–101 Mountain Dew, 35 moving target, 136 multiple discovery, 291–92 multiplication, ix, xi multitasking, 70–72, 74, 76, 110 Munger, Charlie, viii, x–xi, 30, 286, 318 Murphy, Edward, 65 Murphy’s law, 64–65, 132 Musk, Elon, 5, 302 mutually assured destruction (MAD), 231 MVP (minimum viable product), 7–8, 81, 294 Mylan, 283 mythical man-month, 279 name-calling, 226 NASA, 4, 32, 33 Nash, John, 213 Nash equilibrium, 213–14, 226, 235 National Football League (NFL), 225–26 National Institutes of Health, 36 National Security Agency, 52 natural selection, 99–100, 102, 291, 295 nature versus nurture, 249–50 negative compounding, 85 negative externalities, 41–43, 47 negative returns, 82–83, 93 negotiations, 127–28 net benefit, 181–82, 184 Netflix, 69, 95, 203 net present value (NPV), 86, 181 network effects, 117–20, 308 neuroticism, 250 New Orleans, La., 41 Newport, Cal, 72 news headlines, 12–13, 221 newspapers, 106 Newsweek, 290 Newton, Isaac, 102, 291 New York Times, 27, 220, 254 Nielsen Holdings, 217 ninety-ninety rule, 89 Nintendo, 296 Nobel Prize, 32, 42, 220, 291, 306 nocebo effect, 137 nodes, 118, 119 No Fly List, 53–54 noise and signal, 311 nonresponse bias, 140, 142, 143 normal distribution (bell curve), 150–52, 153, 163–66, 191 North Korea, 229, 231, 238 north star, 68–70, 275 nothing in excess, 60 not ready for prime time, 242 “now what” questions, 291 NPR, 239 nuclear chain reaction, viii, 114, 120 nuclear industry, 305–6 nuclear option, 238 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), 305–6 nuclear weapons, 114, 118, 195, 209, 230–31, 233, 238 nudging, 13–14 null hypothesis, 163, 164 numbers, 130, 146 large, law of, 143–44 small, law of, 143, 144 see also data; statistics nurses, 284 Oakland Athletics, 289 Obama, Barack, 64, 241 objective versus subjective, in organizational culture, 274 obnoxious aggression, 264 observe, orient, decide, act (OODA), 294–95 observer effect, 52, 54 observer-expectancy bias, 136, 139 Ockham’s razor, 8–10 Odum, William E., 38 oil, 105–6 Olympics, 209, 246–48, 285 O’Neal, Shaquille, 246 one-hundred-year floods, 192 Onion, 211–12 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (Darwin), 100 OODA loop, 294–95 openness to experience, 250 Operation Ceasefire, 232 opinion, diversity of, 205, 206 opioids, 36 opportunity cost, 76–77, 80, 83, 179, 182, 188, 305 of capital, 77, 179, 182 optimistic probability bias, 33 optimization, premature, 7 optimums, local and global, 195–96 optionality, preserving, 58–59 Oracle, 231, 291, 299 order, 124 balance between chaos and, 128 organizations: culture in, 107–8, 113, 273–80, 293 size and growth of, 278–79 teams in, see teams ostrich with its head in the sand, 55 out-group bias, 127 outliers, 148 Outliers (Gladwell), 261 overfitting, 10–11 overwork, 82 Paine, Thomas, 221–22 pain relievers, 36, 137 Pampered Chef, 217 Pangea, 24–25 paradigm shift, 24, 289 paradox of choice, 62–63 parallel processing, 96 paranoia, 308, 309, 311 Pareto, Vilfredo, 80 Pareto principle, 80–81 Pariser, Eli, 17 Parkinson, Cyril, 74–75, 89 Parkinson’s law, 89 Parkinson’s Law (Parkinson), 74–75 Parkinson’s law of triviality, 74, 89 passwords, 94, 97 past, 201, 271–72, 309–10 Pasteur, Louis, 26 path dependence, 57–59, 194 path of least resistance, 88 Patton, Bruce, 19 Pauling, Linus, 220 payoff matrix, 212–15, 238 PayPal, 72, 291, 296 peak, 105, 106, 112 peak oil, 105 Penny, Jonathon, 52 pent-up energy, 112 perfect, 89–90 as enemy of the good, 61, 89–90 personality traits, 249–50 person-month, 279 perspective, 11 persuasion, see influence models perverse incentives, 50–51, 54 Peter, Laurence, 256 Peter principle, 256, 257 Peterson, Tom, 108–9 Petrified Forest National Park, 217–18 Pew Research, 53 p-hacking, 169, 172 phishing, 97 phones, 116–17, 290 photography, 302–3, 308–10 physics, x, 114, 194, 293 quantum, 200–201 pick your battles, 238 Pinker, Steven, 144 Pirahã, x Pitbull, 36 pivoting, 295–96, 298–301, 308, 311, 312 placebo, 137 placebo effect, 137 Planck, Max, 24 Playskool, 111 Podesta, John, 97 point of no return, 244 Polaris, 67–68 polarity, 125–26 police, in organizations and projects, 253–54 politics, 70, 104 ads and statements in, 225–26 elections, 206, 218, 233, 241, 271, 293, 299 failure and, 47 influence in, 216 predictions in, 206 polls and surveys, 142–43, 152–54, 160 approval ratings, 152–54, 158 employee engagement, 140, 142 postmortems, 32, 92 Potemkin village, 228–29 potential energy, 112 power, 162 power drills, 296 power law distribution, 80–81 power vacuum, 259–60 practice, deliberate, 260–62, 264, 266 precautionary principle, 59–60 Predictably Irrational (Ariely), 14, 222–23 predictions and forecasts, 132, 173 market for, 205–7 superforecasters and, 206–7 PredictIt, 206 premature optimization, 7 premises, see principles pre-mortems, 92 present bias, 85, 87, 93, 113 preserving optionality, 58–59 pressure point, 112 prices, 188, 231, 299 arbitrage and, 282–83 bait and switch and, 228, 229 inflation in, 179–80, 182–83 loss leader strategy and, 236–37 manufacturer’s suggested retail, 15 monopolies and, 283 principal, 44–45 principal-agent problem, 44–45 principles (premises), 207 first, 4–7, 31, 207 prior, 159 prioritizing, 68 prisoners, 63, 232 prisoner’s dilemma, 212–14, 226, 234–35, 244 privacy, 55 probability, 132, 173, 194 bias, optimistic, 33 conditional, 156 probability distributions, 150, 151 bell curve (normal), 150–52, 153, 163–66, 191 Bernoulli, 152 central limit theorem and, 152–53, 163 fat-tailed, 191 power law, 80–81 sample, 152–53 pro-con lists, 175–78, 185, 189 procrastination, 83–85, 87, 89 product development, 294 product/market fit, 292–96, 302 promotions, 256, 275 proximate cause, 31, 117 proxy endpoint, 137 proxy metric, 139 psychology, 168 Psychology of Science, The (Maslow), 177 Ptolemy, Claudius, 8 publication bias, 170, 173 public goods, 39 punching above your weight, 242 p-values, 164, 165, 167–69, 172 Pygmalion effect, 267–68 Pyrrhus, King, 239 Qualcomm, 231 quantum physics, 200–201 quarantine, 234 questions: now what, 291 what if, 122, 201 why, 32, 33 why now, 291 quick and dirty, 234 quid pro quo, 215 Rabois, Keith, 72, 265 Rachleff, Andy, 285–86, 292–93 radical candor, 263–64 Radical Candor (Scott), 263 radiology, 291 randomized controlled experiment, 136 randomness, 201 rats, 51 Rawls, John, 21 Regan, Ronald, 183 real estate agents, 44–45 recessions, 121–22 reciprocity, 215–16, 220, 222, 229, 289 recommendations, 217 red line, 238 referrals, 217 reframe the problem, 96–97 refugee asylum cases, 144 regression to the mean, 146, 286 regret, 87 regulations, 183–84, 231–32 regulatory capture, 305–7 reinventing the wheel, 92 relationships, 53, 55, 63, 91, 111, 124, 159, 271, 296, 298 being locked into, 305 dating, 8–10, 95 replication crisis, 168–72 Republican Party, 104 reputation, 215 research: meta-analysis of, 172–73 publication bias and, 170, 173 systematic reviews of, 172, 173 see also experiments resonance, 293–94 response bias, 142, 143 responsibility, diffusion of, 259 restaurants, 297 menus at, 14, 62 RetailMeNot, 281 retaliation, 238 returns: diminishing, 81–83 negative, 82–83, 93 reversible decisions, 61–62 revolving door, 306 rewards, 275 Riccio, Jim, 306 rise to the occasion, 268 risk, 43, 46, 90, 288 cost-benefit analysis and, 180 de-risking, 6–7, 10, 294 moral hazard and, 43–45, 47 Road Ahead, The (Gates), 69 Roberts, Jason, 122 Roberts, John, 27 Rogers, Everett, 116 Rogers, William, 31 Rogers Commission Report, 31–33 roles, 256–58, 260, 271, 293 roly-poly toy, 111–12 root cause, 31–33, 234 roulette, 144 Rubicon River, 244 ruinous empathy, 264 Rumsfeld, Donald, 196–97, 247 Rumsfeld’s Rule, 247 Russia, 218, 241 Germany and, 70, 238–39 see also Soviet Union Sacred Heart University (SHU), 217, 218 sacrifice play, 239 Sagan, Carl, 220 sales, 81, 216–17 Salesforce, 299 same-sex marriage, 117, 118 Sample, Steven, 28 sample distribution, 152–53 sample size, 143, 160, 162, 163, 165–68, 172 Sánchez, Ricardo, 234 sanctions and fines, 232 Sanders, Bernie, 70, 182, 293 Sayre, Wallace, 74 Sayre’s law, 74 scarcity, 219, 220 scatter plot, 126 scenario analysis (scenario planning), 198–99, 201–3, 207 schools, see education and schools Schrödinger, Erwin, 200 Schrödinger’s cat, 200 Schultz, Howard, 296 Schwartz, Barry, 62–63 science, 133, 220 cargo cult, 315–16 Scientific Autobiography and other Papers (Planck), 24 scientific evidence, 139 scientific experiments, see experiments scientific method, 101–2, 294 scorched-earth tactics, 243 Scott, Kim, 263 S curves, 117, 120 secondary markets, 281–82 second law of thermodynamics, 124 secrets, 288–90, 292 Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S., 228 security, false sense of, 44 security services, 229 selection, adverse, 46–47 selection bias, 139–40, 143, 170 self-control, 87 self-fulfilling prophecies, 267 self-serving bias, 21, 272 Seligman, Martin, 22 Semmelweis, Ignaz, 25–26 Semmelweis reflex, 26 Seneca, Marcus, 60 sensitivity analysis, 181–82, 185, 188 dynamic, 195 Sequoia Capital, 291 Sessions, Roger, 8 sexual predators, 113 Shakespeare, William, 105 Sheets Energy Strips, 36 Shermer, Michael, 133 Shirky, Clay, 104 Shirky principle, 104, 112 Short History of Nearly Everything, A (Bryson), 50 short-termism, 55–56, 58, 60, 68, 85 side effects, 137 signal and noise, 311 significance, 167 statistical, 164–67, 170 Silicon Valley, 288, 289 simulations, 193–95 simultaneous invention, 291–92 Singapore math, 23–24 Sir David Attenborough, RSS, 35 Skeptics Society, 133 sleep meditation app, 162–68 slippery slope argument, 235 slow (high-concentration) thinking, 30, 33, 70–71 small numbers, law of, 143, 144 smartphones, 117, 290, 309, 310 smoking, 41, 42, 133–34, 139, 173 Snap, 299 Snowden, Edward, 52, 53 social engineering, 97 social equality, 117 social media, 81, 94, 113, 217–19, 241 Facebook, 18, 36, 94, 119, 219, 233, 247, 305, 308 Instagram, 220, 247, 291, 310 YouTube, 220, 291 social networks, 117 Dunbar’s number and, 278 social norms versus market norms, 222–24 social proof, 217–20, 229 societal change, 100–101 software, 56, 57 simulations, 192–94 solitaire, 195 solution space, 97 Somalia, 243 sophomore slump, 145–46 South Korea, 229, 231, 238 Soviet Union: Germany and, 70, 238–39 Gosplan in, 49 in Cold War, 209, 235 space exploration, 209 spacing effect, 262 Spain, 243–44 spam, 37, 161, 192–93, 234 specialists, 252–53 species, 120 spending, 38, 74–75 federal, 75–76 spillover effects, 41, 43 sports, 82–83 baseball, 83, 145–46, 289 football, 226, 243 Olympics, 209, 246–48, 285 Spotify, 299 spreadsheets, 179, 180, 182, 299 Srinivasan, Balaji, 301 standard deviation, 149, 150–51, 154 standard error, 154 standards, 93 Stanford Law School, x Starbucks, 296 startup business idea, 6–7 statistics, 130–32, 146, 173, 289, 297 base rate in, 157, 159, 160 base rate fallacy in, 157, 158, 170 Bayesian, 157–60 confidence intervals in, 154–56, 159 confidence level in, 154, 155, 161 frequentist, 158–60 p-hacking in, 169, 172 p-values in, 164, 165, 167–69, 172 standard deviation in, 149, 150–51, 154 standard error in, 154 statistical significance, 164–67, 170 summary, 146, 147 see also data; experiments; probability distributions Staubach, Roger, 243 Sternberg, Robert, 290 stock and flow diagrams, 192 Stone, Douglas, 19 stop the bleeding, 234 strategy, 107–8 exit, 242–43 loss leader, 236–37 pivoting and, 295–96, 298–301, 308, 311, 312 tactics versus, 256–57 strategy tax, 103–4, 112 Stiglitz, Joseph, 306 straw man, 225–26 Streisand, Barbra, 51 Streisand effect, 51, 52 Stroll, Cliff, 290 Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The (Kuhn), 24 subjective versus objective, in organizational culture, 274 suicide, 218 summary statistics, 146, 147 sunk-cost fallacy, 91 superforecasters, 206–7 Superforecasting (Tetlock), 206–7 super models, viii–xii super thinking, viii–ix, 3, 316, 318 surface area, 122 luck, 122, 124, 128 surgery, 136–37 Surowiecki, James, 203–5 surrogate endpoint, 137 surveys, see polls and surveys survivorship bias, 140–43, 170, 272 sustainable competitive advantage, 283, 285 switching costs, 305 systematic review, 172, 173 systems thinking, 192, 195, 198 tactics, 256–57 Tajfel, Henri, 127 take a step back, 298 Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, 2, 105 talk past each other, 225 Target, 236, 252 target, measurable, 49–50 taxes, 39, 40, 56, 104, 193–94 T cells, 194 teams, 246–48, 275 roles in, 256–58, 260 size of, 278 10x, 248, 249, 255, 260, 273, 280, 294 Tech, 83 technical debt, 56, 57 technologies, 289–90, 295 adoption curves of, 115 adoption life cycles of, 116–17, 129, 289, 290, 311–12 disruptive, 308, 310–11 telephone, 118–19 temperature: body, 146–50 thermostats and, 194 tennis, 2 10,000-Hour Rule, 261 10x individuals, 247–48 10x teams, 248, 249, 255, 260, 273, 280, 294 terrorism, 52, 234 Tesla, Inc., 300–301 testing culture, 50 Tetlock, Philip E., 206–7 Texas sharpshooter fallacy, 136 textbooks, 262 Thaler, Richard, 87 Theranos, 228 thermodynamics, 124 thermostats, 194 Thiel, Peter, 72, 288, 289 thinking: black-and-white, 126–28, 168, 272 convergent, 203 counterfactual, 201, 272, 309–10 critical, 201 divergent, 203 fast (low-concentration), 30, 70–71 gray, 28 inverse, 1–2, 291 lateral, 201 outside the box, 201 slow (high-concentration), 30, 33, 70–71 super, viii–ix, 3, 316, 318 systems, 192, 195, 198 writing and, 316 Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), 30 third story, 19, 92 thought experiment, 199–201 throwing good money after bad, 91 throwing more money at the problem, 94 tight versus loose, in organizational culture, 274 timeboxing, 75 time: management of, 38 as money, 77 work and, 89 tipping point, 115, 117, 119, 120 tit-for-tat, 214–15 Tōgō Heihachirō, 241 tolerance, 117 tools, 95 too much of a good thing, 60 top idea in your mind, 71, 72 toxic culture, 275 Toys “R” Us, 281 trade-offs, 77–78 traditions, 275 tragedy of the commons, 37–40, 43, 47, 49 transparency, 307 tribalism, 28 Trojan horse, 228 Truman Show, The, 229 Trump, Donald, 15, 206, 293 Trump: The Art of the Deal (Trump and Schwartz), 15 trust, 20, 124, 215, 217 trying too hard, 82 Tsushima, Battle of, 241 Tupperware, 217 TurboTax, 104 Turner, John, 127 turn lemons into lemonade, 121 Tversky, Amos, 9, 90 Twain, Mark, 106 Twitter, 233, 234, 296 two-front wars, 70 type I error, 161 type II error, 161 tyranny of small decisions, 38, 55 Tyson, Mike, 7 Uber, 231, 275, 288, 290 Ulam, Stanislaw, 195 ultimatum game, 224, 244 uncertainty, 2, 132, 173, 180, 182, 185 unforced error, 2, 10, 33 unicorn candidate, 257–58 unintended consequences, 35–36, 53–55, 57, 64–65, 192, 232 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), 306 unique value proposition, 211 University of Chicago, 144 unknown knowns, 198, 203 unknowns: known, 197–98 unknown, 196–98, 203 urgency, false, 74 used car market, 46–47 U.S.

The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization
by Richard Baldwin
Published 14 Nov 2016

The law that impels the “I” in ICT is called Moore’s Law after its originator Gordon Moore. This law asserts that computing power grows exponentially—with, for example, computer chip performance doubling every eighteen months. The propulsion behind the “T” part is described by two laws: Gilder’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law. George Gilder observed that bandwidth grows three times more rapidly than computer power—doubling every six months. This allows transmission advances to help relax computing and storage constraints. Advances in data transmission, processing, and storage amplify each other. This is the economic basis of “the cloud” and its various uses.

…

See industrialization market access, 211 market fragmentation, 184–185 market research, 173 Meier, Gerald, 17 Meiji Japan example, 183–184f Melitz, Marc, 127 mental models, 111–112, 119, 137–138, 172, 177, 229f, 243–244, 263–266, 269. See also abstractions; national perspective; Ricardo, David; three-cascading-constraints view mercantilism, 119–120 Mesoamerica, 26f, 27 Mesopotamia, 27, 31 Metcalfe’s Law, 83, 285 Mexico, 41f, 72, 79–80, 86–87, 94f, 95, 97f, 102. See also Border Assembly Incorporated; Latin America; R11 (Rising Eleven) MFN principle, 68–69 Mianovic, Branko, 162–163 Middle Ages, 119–120 Middle East, 26f, 27, 30f, 31f, 37–38, 62–63t, 100f. See also Silk Road migrations, human, 10, 21–23, 23f, 62t, 126, 138–139, 188–189, 284.

Television disrupted: the transition from network to networked TV
by Shelly Palmer
Published 14 Apr 2006

All rights reserved. 12-Television.Chap Twelve v3.qxd 3/20/06 7:28 AM Page 175 Consumer Media Choices Revisited 175 woefully inadequate for the technological time in which we live. This may get some politicians to take notice, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. What’s the answer? Maybe it won’t happen. But if it does, it will deliver several millions of 13-u Metcalfe’s law:“The to 32-year-old males who are unbelievably valuable to advertisers. We will certainly notice the power of the network increases paradigm shift, but it should be quite gradual.The exponentially by the number of reason it will feel slow is that these systems can computers connected to it.

…

Suffice it to say, the telcos will have a real uphill battle with their quadruple play of wireless, IPTV, VoIP and the Internet. That being said, this wealth of commoditized bandwidth is going to have a huge impact on the way the future unfolds — especially for content on mesh networks. Remember Metcalfe’s law, “The power of the network increases exponentially by the number of computers connected to it. Therefore, every computer added to the network both uses it as a resource while adding resources in a spiral of increasing value and choice.” Sony vs. Apple Sir Howard Stringer said, “IPod is a great device, but it doesn’t sell us a helluva lot of content.

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane
by Brett King
Published 5 May 2016

The atomic or space age, while disruptive from a technology perspective, created many more jobs and much more wealth than it displaced. The Information or Digital Age (1975–2015) At the centre of technology innovation today lie three core laws or principles. Moore’s Law, which we covered earlier in the chapter, and two other laws known as Metcalfe’s Law (and the closely associated Gilder’s Law) and Kryder’s Law, a principle related to storage mediums. Collectively, they cover the core precepts of the digital age—computing power, networking and storage (or data). Computing and telecommunications have had a profound effect on the world and our behaviour over the last few decades.

…

This technology quickly developed into what became known as n-tier computing, allowing us to link many personal computers and application servers into very powerful office network systems. Companies like Oracle were born out of the need to build databases and software systems on these new architectures. Metcalfe’s Law, named after 3Com’s founder, essentially states that as the number of connections (or nodes) in a network increases, the value to those users on the network grows exponentially. It explains why social networks like Facebook and Twitter have grown so quickly in recent years. Understanding the effect of networks is essential to understanding our future.

A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond
by Daniel Susskind
Published 14 Jan 2020

The classic explanation of these effects goes back to the days when telephones got installed in people’s houses: adding a new person to a phone network is not only useful for her, but also valuable for everyone already on the network, because now they can call her as well. It follows that as a network grows, each additional person is even more valuable to the network than the one before. Mathematically, this idea is sometimes referred to as Metcalfe’s law: the value of a network with n users is proportional to n2. Today, of course, we have moved beyond telephone landlines, and the obvious place to start when thinking about networks is with social media platforms. Facebook and Twitter, for instance, would be far less fun for their users (and far less lucrative for their owners) if there were no other people online to read what they share.

…

See also ALM hypothesis libraries lidar life skills limitations, defining LinkedIn Literary Creative Turing Tests loan agreement review location, task encroachment and Loew, Judah Logic Theorist loopholes Lowrey, Annie loyalty Ludd, Ned Luddites lump of labor fallacy magicians manual capabilities manufacturing manure Marienthal study Marshall, Alfred Marx, Karl massive open online courses (MOOC) mass media, leisure and McCarthy, John Meade, James meaning creation of leisure and relationship of work with work with work without medicine Big Tech and changing-pie effect and task encroachment and membership requirements, conditional basic income and meritocracy Merlin Metcalfe’s Law Microsoft Mill, John Stuart minimum wage minorities Minsky, Marvin models, overview of Mokyr, Joel Möller, Anton monopolies MOOC. See massive open online courses Moravec, Hans Moravec’s Paradox Moretti, Enrico Murnane, Richard. See also ALM hypothesis music composition Musk, Elon Nadella, Satya narrow intelligence, artificial National Endowment for the Arts National Health Service nationalization Native Americans natural selection navigation systems network effects Newell, Allen Newton, Isaac Ng, Andrew Nilsson, Nils non-routine tasks Norway Obama, Barack Occupy Movement O’Connor, Sarah Odysseus OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) offshore tax havens O’Grady, Frances Old Testament Omidyar, Pierre omitted variable bias On Assistance to the Poor (Vives) “The One Percent” online education On the Origin of Species (Darwin) opacity opium of the people ornithology Orwell, George Osborne, Michael oversight, political ownership Paine, Thomas Paley, William Palro (humanoid) paper clip analogy “Parable of Horseshit” parametric design Paro (therapeutic baby seal) participation rate partnerships pay pension systems Pepper (humanoid robot) personal computer (PC) personalized learning systems PhotoMath PIAAC.

Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream
by Nicholas Lemann
Published 9 Sep 2019

More users meant more available material on the network—why would anybody want to join the number two network, especially if that meant abandoning their own elaborately built-up online presence on the number one network? A broadcast-era business maxim, called Sarnoff’s law after the founder of NBC, was that the value of a network varies arithmetically with the size of its audience. Silicon Valley’s updated twenty-first-century version was Metcalfe’s law (named after Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet technology, which permits direct, noncentralized communication between computer workstations), which has it that the value of a network varies exponentially with its number of users. (As a young engineer helping to design an early automatic teller machine for Chase Manhattan Bank, Bob Metcalfe was given a brief audience with the bank’s chairman, David Rockefeller, who had on his desk a five-foot-wide custom-built Rolodex containing more than a hundred thousand cards.

…

Maria High School markets, see free-market purism; investment banking; specific financial instruments Markowitz, Harry Marx, Karl Marzullo, Vito Maslow, Abraham Mason, Edward McCain, John McDonald, Colleen McDonald, Laquan McKinsey & Company Means, Gardiner Meckling, William Medina, Harold Meeker, Mary Mellon Bank mergers and acquisitions; by banks; in Chicago Lawn; globalization of; at Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch Merton, Robert C. Metcalfe, Bob Metcalfe’s law Mexico: factories moved to; immigrants from microeconomics; see also corporations Microsoft middle class; corporations as benefit to; corporations as hindrance to; regulation to support; as stockholders; see also Chicago Lawn Middle-earth liberalism Milgram, Stanley Milken, Michael Miller, Merton Mills, C.

Facebook: The Inside Story
by Steven Levy
Published 25 Feb 2020

As more Harvard students signed up, the chances increased that they would find profiles of their friends, of people they might like to have as friends. In the early 1980s, computer scientist Bob Metcalfe wrote about the network effect, postulating that the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of people joining (this became known as Metcalfe’s law). Hour by hour, the impetus for students to sign up began to flip from engaging in a diverting pastime to an absolute necessity, as not being on Thefacebook made you a virtual exile on the physical campus. Later, sociologists and start-up gurus would endlessly analyze what happened at Harvard in February 2004, painstakingly deconstructing the forensics of the lightning that Zuckerberg had bottled.

…

s attempt to acquire FB, 134–35 on Zuckerberg’s personality, 256 Kendall, Tim, 178–79, 180, 183, 187, 189, 198, 199, 211 Kirkpatrick, David, 10, 244–45 Kogan, Aleksandr background of, 399–400 banned from FB, 425 colleagues’ concerns about, 415–17 consulting work with Facebook, 408, 419 critical Guardian article on, 417–18 and data deletion demanded by FB, 419, 420, 422, 424–25 and data for Cambridge Analytica, 399, 411–13, 414–19, 420–21, 422, 423–26 data gathering app of, 408–10, 412, 413, 414, 419 and FB’s Terms of Service, 414, 415 and Global Science Research, 412, 413 and SCL, 410, 413, 417 Kordestani, Omid, 192, 193, 200 Kosinski, Michal, 400, 401–5, 410, 412–13, 414–17 Koum, Jan, 317–25, 501, 503, 504, 505 Kramer, Adam, 406 Krieger, Mike, 300–302, 304, 305, 489, 509, 512 Kushner, Jared, 351 Lane, Sean, 187, 189 Leahy, Patrick, 437 Leathern, Rob, 466 LeCun, Yann, 453–54 Lessin, Sam, 65–66, 173, 472 Levchin, Max, 88, 152, 160–61, 164 Levine, Marne, 200, 339 Lewis, Harry, 61–62 Li, Charlene, 186 Libra digital currency, 516–21 Like button, 202–7, 402–4, 416 LinkedIn, 86, 220, 269 location technology, 310–11 Lookalike Audiences, 352 Losse, Kate, 130, 136, 228, 246, 248–49, 294 Luckey, Palmer, 325–27, 492–95 Macedonia, fake news originating from, 358–59, 364, 365 machine learning, 452–53, 454 Marconi, Guglielmo, 19 Marcus, David, 315, 506, 517, 519 Marks, Meagan, 39, 64 Marlette, Scott, 105, 114 Marlinspike, Moxie, 500, 505 Marlow, Cameron, 224, 337–38, 408 Martin, Kevin, 339 Martínez, Antonio García, 466 Mayer, Marissa, 322 McCollum, Andrew on adding new features, 111 and Casa Facebook in Silicon Valley, 76, 77, 83 co-founder role of, 69 at Harvard, 50, 54, 60 at La Jennifer house, 97 on Moskovitz’s importance to FB, 96 page design and logo for thefacebook, 62 on Parker–Zuckerberg relationship, 93 on personality of Zuckerberg, 70 on servers, 98 and Silicon Valley workspace, 77 and Wirehog project, 94 on work style of Zuckerberg, 92 McNamee, Roger, 134, 193–94, 211, 359, 473 Mechanical Turk, 409 “memorialization” protocols, 450 Mentions feature, 439 Mercer, Robert, 411, 417, 422 Messenger, 313–15, 477 Metcalfe’s law (network effect), 67 Microsoft attempts to acquire FB, 179 and contact scraping issue, 215–16 investment in FB, 185 and invitations to join FB labeled as spam, 184 and MySpace ads, 179 partnership with FB, 131–32, 183–85, 198 and Platform of FB, 155 Zuckerberg’s respect for, 152 midterm elections of 2018, 485–86 Milgram, Stanley, 20 Miller, Ross, 30 Milner, Yuri, 288 Mini-Feed feature, 130–31, 139–40 misinformation.

…

s attempt to acquire FB, 136 Mossberg, Walt, 271 Mosseri, Adam, 362, 364–65, 388–89, 390, 512 “Move fast and break things” ethic of Facebook, 6, 16, 106, 240–43, 246, 427 MoveOn.org, 188, 262 Mueller, Robert, 336, 374–75, 378 murders on Facebook Live, 441 Murdoch, Rupert, 132 Murphy, Bobby, 308, 311–12 music industry, 93–94 Musk, Elon, 5, 6, 7, 8, 88, 232, 506 Myanmar (previously Burma), 11, 435–39, 526 MySpace acquired by Murdoch’s NewsCorp, 132 advertising practices on, 199 and child predation settlement, 250 and iLike app, 158 images posted to, 113–14 market dominance of, 91, 132 obsolescence of, 297 and Open Registration at FB, 144 popularity of, 59 proposed acquisition of FB, 132, 179 and RapLeaf (data broker), 269 third-party apps on, 153–54, 155, 159–60 “Napalm Girl” image, 456–58 Napster, 80, 86, 93–94 Narendra, Divya, 56, 73, 76 NECO campaigns, 176 Netflix, 171, 175, 239 net neutrality, 233 network effect (Metcalfe’s law), 67 News Feed of FB advertisements in, 138, 181, 295–98, 475, 477 algorithms feeding and filtering, 127–28, 142, 163, 172, 260–61, 385, 391 and Cambridge Analytica, 399 and content publishers, 387–90, 391 criticisms of, 385–86 and customer support issues, 250 design and implementation of, 14, 123–31, 139–40 “disputed content” on, 389 and emotional contagion study, 406–8 and fact-checking operations, 389 fake news on (see fake news and misinformation) and Instant Articles feature, 387, 388 and Like button, 202–7, 402–4, 416 and Mini-Feed feature, 130–31, 139–40 and monetization of FB, 180 and myPersonality survey, 401 need for changes in, 385, 386–89 news consumption on, 128, 386–90, 391 and new users, 224 and Next Facebook, 488 outside content appearing on, 307–8 power of, 142 and privacy questions, 137–38, 143–44 and propaganda, 346, 348 quality studies for, 391 sensational content amplified on, 399 and sharing of content, 401 and spam wars, 163–65 and sponsored stories, 180, 296, 476 and stories from newer, weaker ties, 225 testing of, 137 and third-party developers and apps, 163–65 toxic addictiveness of, 385–86 and Trump campaign’s ads, 353 Twitter-inspired redesign of, 259–63, 525 and user activities reported from partner apps, 172 users’ reactions to, 140–43 video content in, 390–91 and virality, 262–63 news sources on social media, 132, 347 nipples policy, 252–53, 254 Nix, Alexander, 410–11, 413–14, 420–23 Obama, Barack, 334, 339–40, 350, 361–62, 363 Obama, Michelle, 467–68 Obama presidential campaigns, 350, 352 objectionable content on Facebook, 247–54, 435, 456.

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt
by Sinan Aral
Published 14 Sep 2020

But in truth, network effects are likely to add value superlinearly, meaning each new adopter adds more value than the last, at least up to a point. Consider Metcalfe’s Law: two telephones can make one connection, but four telephones can make sixteen connections, eight can make sixty-four connections, and so on. In Metcalfe’s formulation, each new possible point of contact in a network adds value quadratically, not linearly, so that the value of the network is proportional to the square of the number of users or connections (V = a + ct2). Some argue that Metcalfe’s Law implies that network value is exponential, but I hesitate to conclude that network effects take any particular functional form (exponential, quadratic, etc.), or that this nonlinearity lasts forever, because (as we have discussed) all possible connections in a network are not equally valuable to every new adopter.

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization
by Parag Khanna
Published 18 Apr 2016

Globalization is almost always written about in terms of how it operates within the existing order rather than how it creates a new one. Yet connectivity is the change emerging from within the system that ultimately changes the system itself. Its networks are not merely conduits of connections, but the power of the network itself increases exponentially as the number of nodes increases (Metcalfe’s law). No superpower is robust enough to stand outside the system. It is telling that in the Global Trends 2030 report of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the United States is no longer characterized as a predictable stabilizer but fingered as an uncertain variable. How much power will America have in 2030?

…

*9 In just three years from 2011 to 2014, the number of international “friends” people have on Facebook has doubled. Furthermore, as the number of connected people increases, the value of services such as real-time inter-language communication (via Google Translate or Microsoft/Skype) will grow in accordance with Metcalfe’s law. *10 This means self-employed, independent, part-time, or contingent workers. CHAPTER 15 THE GREAT DILUTION A MONGREL CIVILIZATION As a teenager, I used to be confused for Pete Sampras. It turns out it wasn’t because of my serve-volley game and running forehand. In mid-2014, several months after mailing in a cheek swab of saliva to National Geographic’s Genographic Project (as nearly one million people in 140 countries have done), I logged in to read the results.

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
by Jon Gertner
Published 15 Mar 2012

Many years later, a computer engineer named Robert Metcalfe would surmise that the value of a networked device increases dramatically as the number of people using the network grows. The larger the network, in other words, the higher the value of a device on that network to each user.36 This formulation—sometimes known as Metcalfe’s law—can help explain the immense appeal of the telephone system and Internet. However, the smaller the network, the lower the value of a device to each user. Picturephone’s network was minuscule. Price cuts didn’t seem to be working. And so its value was vanishingly small, with little prospect of any increase.

…

Tests showed that it was easier to lie to someone during a Picturephone conversation than in an ordinary telephone conversation. The researchers concluded that when not distracted by a visual image, a caller attends more closely to the content and veracity of the exchange. 36 I’m indebted to Bob Lucky for this comparison. More precisely, Metcalfe’s law suggests that the value of a network grows in proportion to the square of its number of users. 37 John R. Pierce, “Rudolf Kompfner: 1909–1977,” National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoir, 1983. CHAPTER SIXTEEN: COMPETITION 1 The album of black-and-white photographs is part of the Shockley Collection, housed at the Stanford University archives.

Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy
by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
Published 4 Sep 2013

How far is this more-powerful-cheaper-smaller trend going? To the vanishing point, it seems. Some believe that will happen in about ten years. We are among those who disagree because of the important emergent trend, nanotechnology, which envisions microprocessors being reduced to a single cell. Metcalfe’s Law. Ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe set forth the theory that the value of the telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected system nodes. He made his observations back when networks consisted of desktop computers, printers, fax machines and phones. But the law holds true today as billions of nodes are connected via Wifi and are growing rapidly toward the trillions.

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech
by Jamie Susskind
Published 3 Sep 2018

The economy is increasingly interconnected in a web of overlapping networks, which have a number of important characteristics. Firstly, they are generally united by standards: shared rules or practices that set the rules of cooperation among members. Secondly, the more people adopt a given standard (by joining the network and abiding by its rules) the more valuable that standard becomes.28 Metcalfe’s Law holds that the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of nodes attached: doubling the number of nodes means quadrupling the value, and so on. This means ever-increasing pressure on non-members to join. Failure to be part of a popular social network can be seen as weird and eccentric.

…

32 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Index Jie, Ke 32 job applicants 266–7, 268 Jobs, Steve 314 Johnson, Bobby 399 Johnson, Steve 427 Jones, Steve 388 Jøsang, Audun 423 Jouppi, Norm 375 judicial system 102 Jury Theorem 224 justice algorithmic injustice 279–94 civil 259 concept 74–5, 76 conceptual analysis 81 criminal 259 as desert 260–1 as dessert 261, 262 distributive 257–70, 274, 278 and equality, difference between 259 fairness principle 353 property 313–41 in recognition 260, 271–8 social see social justice technological unemployment 295–312 Justinian, Emperor 202 Kahane, Guy 434 Kant, Immanuel 186, 272, 406 Karrahalios, Karrie 433 Kasparov, Garry 31, 36, 373 Kassarnig,Valentin 372 Keen, Andrew 376 Kelion, Leo 413 Kellmereit, Daniel 380 Kelly, Kevin 20, 21, 370, 373, 374, 375, 430 Kelly, Rick 384, 385 Kelly III, John E. 386, 388 Kelsen, Hans 103, 392 Kennedy, John F. 164, 188, 347 Kennedy, Robert F. 256 Keurig 116 Khatchadourian, Raffi 52, 382 503 Khomami, Nadia 397 Al-Khw­ār izmī, Abd’Abdallah Muhammad ibn Mūsā 94 Kim, Mark 376 King, Martin Luther 6, 180, 257, 360, 404 Kirchner, Lauren 403 Kirobo Mini 55 Kitchin, Rob 376, 377, 380, 381, 387, 388, 391, 404 Klaas, Brian 408 Kleinman, Zoe 383 Knockel, Jeffrey 399 Koch brothers 230 Kolhatkar, Sheelah 367, 423 Kollanyi, Bence 413 Korea 20 Kotler, Steven 374, 435 Krasodomski-Jones, Alex 412 Kurzweil, Ray 38, 366, 374, 436 Kymlicka, Will 418 labour market 303 Lai, Richard 386 Lampos,Vasileios 393 Landemore, Hélène 408, 411, 416 Laney, Doug 431 Langbort, Cedric 433 language importance to politics 16–17, 19 limits of 10–11 political concepts 76–80 public and private power 157 Lanier, Jaron 367, 374, 384, 400, 416, 419, 428, 431, 435 Data Deal 338 human enhancement 363 network effect 321 Silicon Valley startups 6–7 Wiki Democracy 246 Lant, Karla 376 Laouris,Yiannis 435 Large Hadron Collider 65 Larkin,Yelena 427 Larson, Jeff 403, 422 Larson, Selena 370, 421 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 504 Index law adaptive 107–10 AI Democracy 253 AI systems 31 code-ified 110–12, 245 digital 100–14 dissent 179–80 enforcement 101–7 intellectual property 332 justice in recognition 274–5 oral cultures 111–12 rule of 115 self-enforcing 101–3 supercharged state 171–2 wise restraints 185–6 written 111, 112 Lawrence, Neil 374, 388, 427 Leftwich, Adrian 389 Lenin,Vladimir Ilyich 21, 153, 370 Leonardo Da Vinci 28 Lessig, Lawrence 391, 392, 394, 420, 433 code as law 96 cyberspace as a place 97 free software 359 law enforcement through force 104, 105 privatization of force 100, 117 Leta Jones, Meg 138, 397, 432 Levellers 215–16 Levy, Steven 404 Lewis, Michael 428 liberal democracy 216–17, 246, 254 liberal-democratic principle of legitimacy 350 liberalism 77, 350 liberty 3, 10, 23, 346 concept 74–5, 76 conceptual analysis 81 contextual analysis 84 Deliberative Democracy 234 and democracy 207–8, 222, 225, 249 digital 205–7 digital dissent 179–84 digital liberation 168–71 harm principle 195–205 human enhancement 363 nature of politics 74 price mechanism 270 and private power 189–94 supercharged state 171–9 and the tech firm 188–208 transparency regulation 355 types 164–8 wise restraints 184–6 see also freedom Library of Congress 56 life-logs 63 Lincoln, Abraham 89, 210, 231, 323 Linn, Allison 398 Linux 243–4, 245, 333 Lipińska,Veronika 435 lip-reading 30 liquid democracy 242 Lively, J. 409 Livingston, James 425 Livy 216 loans, and distributive justice 267, 268 Locke, John 216, 246, 301, 323, 429 loomio.org 234 Lopatto, Elizabeth 434 lottery, work distribution via 304 Loveluck, Benjamin 378 Luca, Michael 423 luck egalitarianism 262, 307 Luddites 13 Lukes, Steven 390–1, 395, 398 Luxemburg, Rosa 348, 432 Lynch, Jack 384 Machiavelli, Niccolò 188, 217, 406, 409 machine learning 34–7, 266 algorithmic injustice 293 commons 332 data-based injustice 282 Data Democracy 248 data’s economic importance 317 distributive justice 267 future of code 98 group membership fallacy 284 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Index increasingly quantified society 61 liberty and private power 191 political campaigning 220 predictions 139, 173, 175 productive technologies 316 rule-based injustice 284 MacKinnon, Rebecca 396 Madison, James 216, 241, 369, 415 MagicLeap 59 Maistre, Joseph de 101 make-work 304 manipulation 93, 122 code 96, 97 digital liberation 170–1 harm principle 200 Mannheim, Karl 78, 390 Manyika, James 424 Mao, Huina 416 Marconi, Guglielmo 21 marginalization 273 Margretts, Helen 410 market system, and distributive justice 264–5 Markoff, John 400, 413 Martinez, Peter 413 Marx, Karl 367, 390, 398, 415, 417, 424, 425, 429, 434, 436 Communist Manifesto 326–7, 362 Direct Democracy 240–1 future of political ideas 86 justice 258 perception-control 144 on philosophers 7 political concepts 78 property 324, 326–7 sorcerer 366 workers 295, 298, 301, 307 Mason, Paul 374 Massachusetts Institute of Technology see MIT Mattu, Surya 403 Maxim, Hiram 20 Mayer-Schönberger,Viktor 387, 388, 395, 397, 427, 433 data 62, 65 forgetting versus remembering 137 505 Mayr, Otto 14, 368 McAfee, Andrew 374, 382, 390, 393, 427, 431 capital 315, 316, 334 McChesney, Robert W. 400, 427 McDermott, Daniel 390 McGinnis, John O. 416 McKinsey 295, 299 Mearian, Lucas 386 MedEthEx 108 medicine 3D printing 56–7 AI systems 31, 32, 108–9, 113 digital law 112–13 increasingly integrated technology 51, 54, 56–7 ransomware 182 robotics 54 technological unemployment 300 Medium 183 memory 136–8 Merchant, Brian 430 merit, and distributive justice 261 Mesthene, Emmanuel G. 368 metadata 63 Metcalfe’s Law 320 Metz, Cade 372, 373, 374, 375, 380 Metz, Rachel 407 Michaely, Roni 427 Microsoft acquisitions 318 chips 40 commons 332 concentration of tech industry 318, 320 Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism 191 HoloLens 59 patents 315 speech-recognition AI system 30 Tay 37, 346 might is right 349 military AI systems 31 brain–computer interfaces 48 sensors 50 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 506 Index Mill, James 195 Mill, John Stuart 367, 403, 406–7, 411, 414, 415 change, need for 3 Deliberative Democracy 234 democracy 223 freedom of speech, constraints on 237 harm principle 196, 198, 199, 203 liberty 195–6, 201, 203 liquid democracy 242 normative analysis 83 predictions 173 upbringing 195 Miller, David 435 Mills, Laurence 418 Milton, John 124, 167, 395 minstrel accounts 232 Mirani, Leo 396 Miremadi, Mehdi 424 Misra, Tanvi 377 MIT affective computing 53 bomb-detecting spinach 50–1 Senseable City Lab 50 Technology Review Custom 427 temporary tattoos for smartphone control 51 Mitchell, Margaret 403 Mitchell, William J. 183, 376, 405 Mizokami, Kyle 379 Moley 407 Momentum Machines 299 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de 358, 433 Moore, Gordon 39, 374 Moore’s Law 39–40, 41 morality AI Democracy 253 automation of 176–7 Data Democracy 249–50 Direct Democracy 240 fragmented 204, 231 harm principle 200–5 justice in distribution 261 see also ethics Moravec’s paradox 54, 382 More, Max 402, 434 Morgan, J.

The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley
by Jimmy Soni
Published 22 Feb 2022

To Harris, the merger wasn’t just defensive—it was a strategic piece of offense. He cited Metcalfe’s Law. Devised in the 1980s by Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, the basic idea was simple: The value of a network grows by the square of the size of the network. If a computer network contains five machines, the total network has a value of 25—5 squared; if it has a thousand machines, the network has a value of 1,000,000—1,000 squared. Per Metcalfe, the bigger network has 200 times more machines—but its value is 40,000 times bigger. True for telephones, faxes, and the world wide web, Metcalfe’s law also applied to payments. “Volume wins,” Harris explained.

Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy
by Jonathan Taplin
Published 17 Apr 2017

As European competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager acknowledged last week, we live in the Google age.” So the techno-determinist philosophy has even reached into the brain of Google’s most determined regulatory opponent. This theory of self-reinforcing dominance has often been called the network effect, or Metcalfe’s law, after PARC researcher Bob Metcalfe’s formula that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users. As more people use Google’s search engine, the company becomes exponentially more valuable. Could it be that Google is now what economists call a natural monopoly—a firm, such as a utility, that can supply an entire market’s demand for a service at a price lower than two firms could?

Open for Business Harnessing the Power of Platform Ecosystems
by Lauren Turner Claire , Laure Claire Reillier and Benoit Reillier
Published 14 Oct 2017

Usage externalities occur (as their name indicates) when the platform adds value through interactions and transactions (e.g. usage) by existing members. Membership externalities exist when the value received by users of the platform on one side of the market increases with the number of users on the other side of the market. 2 The total number of relationships (T) in a network of n participants is given by the formula: T = n(n – 1) / 2. 3 Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of its users (e.g. Facebook). Reed’s law states that the increase in value is not only proportional, but exponential, due to the number of subgroups joining the network (e.g. Slack). Beckstrom’s law states that the value is the net value to participants of all the transactions carried over the network.

Principles of Web API Design: Delivering Value with APIs and Microservices
by James Higginbotham
Published 20 Dec 2021

For large organizations, the introduction of additional middle managers is required to coordinate the coordination. The single greatest benefit of microservices is to reduce team coordination. A team operating independently to maintain one or a few microservices can coordinate within their team with limited coordination points outside their team. Based on Metcalfe’s Law, smaller teams result in fewer communication paths. The benefit is that it takes fewer meetings to communicate intent and resolve issues across the organization. The result is a team with more time to design, code, test, and deliver their services. Coordination across teams is not eliminated with microservices, however.

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
by Marc Goodman
Published 24 Feb 2015

As of early 2014, the Tor software has been downloaded nearly 150 million times and is used by two million people daily. Assuming the more conservative figure of 50 percent illicit use, that means every day 300,000 criminals are getting up and going to work on the digital underground using Tor’s hidden services. According to Metcalfe’s law, the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users connected to the system; as such, the threat from a fully networked and anonymous criminal workforce is profound. Crime, Inc. may not be the only dark force using Tor to access hidden Web services.

…

Though in 2013 there were only thirteen billion online devices, Cisco Systems has estimated that by 2020 there will be fifty billion things connected to the Internet, with much more room for exponential growth thereafter. As all of these devices come online and begin sharing data with one another, they will bring with them massive improvements in logistics, employee efficiency, supply chain operations, energy consumption, customer service, and personal productivity. As noted previously, Metcalfe’s law dictates that the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of nodes or computers attached. As IPv6 adds 340 undecillion (340 trillion trillion trillion) new potential nodes to the global information grid, the concomitant explosion in economic value will be incalculable. The McKinsey Global Institute predicts that the innovation enabled across multiple sectors by the Internet of Things is expected to drive as much as an additional $6.2 trillion in value to the global economy by 2025.

The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age
by Astra Taylor
Published 4 Mar 2014

Off-line, local radio stations have been absorbed by Clear Channel and the major labels control more of the music market than they did before the Internet emerged. And online Gates has to position herself and her work on a monopolists’ platform or risk total invisibility. Monopolies, contrary to early expectations, prosper online, where winner-take-all markets emerge partly as a consequence of Metcalfe’s law, which says that the value of a network increases exponentially by the number of connections or users: the more people have telephones or have social media profiles or use a search engine, the more valuable those services become. (Counterintuitively, given his outspoken libertarian views, PayPal founder and first Facebook investor Peter Thiel has declared competition overrated and praised monopolies for improving margins.30) What’s more, many of the emerging info-monopolies now dabble in hardware, software, and content, building their businesses at every possible level, vertically integrating as in the analog era.

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
by Eric Ries
Published 13 Sep 2011

Instead, large media and portal companies such as AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo! operated their IM networks as a loss leader for other services while making modest amounts of money through advertising. IM is an example of a market that involves strong network effects. Like most communication networks, IM is thought to follow Metcalfe’s law: the value of a network as a whole is proportional to the square of the number of participants. In other words, the more people in the network, the more valuable the network. This makes intuitive sense: the value to each participant is driven primarily by how many other people he or she can communicate with.

Life as a Passenger: How Driverless Cars Will Change the World
by David Kerrigan
Published 18 Jun 2017

In one lifetime they have consumed more energy than the whole previous history of mankind [...] the casualties are on the scale of a large war (every year)" Arthur C Clarke With so many apparent negatives to the rise of the car, it’s perhaps surprising that it has lasted until into the 21st century before the arrival of such a focus from the world’s largest companies on replacing it. The car is an example of Metcalfe’s law (the concept that a network becomes more valuable the more people use it). There’s been a self-fulfilling element to cars - “So things become less convenient for the car-less and thus more people got cars.” More than any obviously popular technology - TV, radio, smartphones or social media, transportation permeates our daily lives.

The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (And Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor
by Andy Kessler
Published 12 Oct 2009

“Well, I’ve been playing around in health care,” I admitted. “You mean medical records and stuff like that, the Internet as the hospital IT department?” George asked. “Not really. That’s probably neat stuff, but I’m trying to figure out if health care has any of the same characteristics as Silicon Valley.” “You mean Moore’s law? Metcalfe’s law? Mead’s law?” George asked. “Maybe all of them. Things that scale, elasticity, three-year product turnarounds, new markets that get created overnight. That kind of stuff.” “Okay, okay. I get it. You’d think it’s a natural as we get to smaller and smaller chip dimensions—we can digitize anything.

The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture
by Brian Dear
Published 14 Jun 2017

Many kids had discovered PLATO’s secret dimension as high school students. They were the world’s first “digital natives” (decades before that term would be coined). Now they were becoming college students, and in the seeming blink of an eye those college students were graduating or, ironically, flunking out. PLATO was maturing. Metcalfe’s Law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system. The more people who used PLATO, the more useful it became, attracting even more people in a virtuous cycle, making it even more valuable. In the span of just a few years, across the 1970s, CERL’s PLATO IV system now had over a thousand terminals, and many tens of thousands of users, the majority of whom were in various clusters up and down the state of Illinois.

…

Maggs (1997); Matheny (1997); McGinty (1997); Nelson (1987); Ozzie and Kawell (1997); Sides (1997); Woolley (1997). Other interviews: Bitzer (1975). Published Sources Barnett, D. C. “A Suicide Prevention Incident Involving Use of the Computer.” Professional Psychology 13(4), August 1982, 565–70. DalSanto, Bob. “The Wonderful World of PLATO.” DI, September 20, 1975, S-4, S-5. Metcalfe, Bob. “Metcalfe’s Law: A Network Becomes More Valuable as It Reaches More Users.” Infoworld 17(40), October 2, 1995, 53. Nelson. Computer Lib/Dream Machines, 93–95. Pesman, C. “PLATO Games People Play.” DI, September 20, 1975, S-2, S-3. Rheingold. Virtual Community. Springer, P. G. “PLATO’s Retreatists: The Sordid World of the Computer Addict.”

Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity
by Currid
Published 9 Nov 2010

Barabási and Albert, “Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks.” For a more reader-friendly version of the phenomenon, see Barabási, Linked. In social network analysis, this network structure is called a “scale free network.” Such a network is present if the nodes’ degree frequency distributes according to the power distribution. 14. Metcalfe’s law is a way to observe the increased benefits obtained as more people engage in the network. See Gilder, Telecosm. Reed’s law also looks at the exponential benefits to social networks. David Reed argues that Robert Metcalfe does not fully capture the extent to which additional members of a social network produce exponential connections to members (Reed, “The Law of the Pack”). 15.

The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind
Published 24 Aug 2015

In 2014, 128gb cards were commonplace. In 2005, ten years earlier, the equivalent was a 128mb card. This represents a (slightly more than) one thousandfold increase in capacity in ten years. This is a doubling every year, a steeper exponential growth than in processing power. In the same vein is Metcalfe’s Law, which states (broadly speaking) that the value of a network to its users is proportional to the square of the number of the users connected to it. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘network effect’, and it means that a network’s utility increases non-linearly with the number of new users who join.24 Yet another illustration is Koomey’s Law—that the electrical efficiency of computation will double roughly every eighteen months, as it has done for the last six decades.25 We accept that Kurzweil’s theories do not command universal assent.26 However, other experts and commentators draw similar conclusions on the question of the exponential growth in processing power.27 We also acknowledge that exponential growth in information technologies need not always lead to an explosive increase in the speed and scale of adoption of new systems.

Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)
by Adam Fisher
Published 9 Jul 2018

Ray McClure was trained as an artist but took a job at Odeo—the company that ended up creating Twitter—back when it was just a few artsy, hacker-y people working out of an apartment in San Francisco’s hip Mission district. Bob Metcalfe coinvented Ethernet—the interoffice networking protocol—at Xerox PARC and then founded 3Com to commercialize the standard. He is one of a select few in Silicon Valley to have his own “law.” Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its users. Jane Metcalfe is, with Louis Rossetto, the cofounder of Wired magazine. She was the publisher: the business mind that took the magazine from an idea to an institution. Today she has a new publishing project that aims to do for biology what Wired did for computers: Neo.Life, an online magazine covering the “neo-biological revolution.”

Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption
by Ben Mezrich
Published 20 May 2019

Bitcoin wasn’t some perishable flower masquerading as a store of value, or a company whose stock price was out of whack with its economic output, or a highly leveraged second home. Bitcoin was a network, and if there was one thing they understood, it was the power of networks. The more people that bought in, the more valuable it became—Metcalfe’s law, plain and simple. And networks didn’t grow at a slow and steady pace; they experienced viral growth. “It’s not a bubble, it’s a rush.” When the real fight came, and came fiercely, as it would, how would Bitcoin win? Cameron was convinced that the people who were most likely to fight Bitcoin were those who had the most to lose by its adoption.

The Art of SEO
by Eric Enge , Stephan Spencer , Jessie Stricchiola and Rand Fishkin
Published 7 Mar 2012

The ever-expanding versatility and power of tablet and mobile devices—from indispensable utility apps, to immersive multimedia players, to massively multiplayer online games, to paradigm-shifting hardware advances such as the iPhone’s multitouch display, proximity sensor, GPS, and gyroscopes—will fuel this growth. The network effect, whereby the value of the network grows by the square of the size of the network (Metcalf’s Law), gives further incentive for users to migrate to their mobile devices as more and more apps allow them to interact with their peers in increasingly more interesting ways. The small keyboard/typing surface is currently a severe limitation, but Apple and Google’s voice-based solutions have already made great strides in replacing the keyboard as the input device of choice.

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
by Malcolm Harris
Published 14 Feb 2023

Palo Alto and Silicon Valley and Stanford and tech and the internet stood for more than the newest electronics; that cluster of nouns meant a new way of doing business, a new plan for growth in a unipolar American capitalist world. They stood for getting fucking rich. One of the reasons capitalists were so excited about these internetworking companies was a principle outlined by Metcalfe that—as Silicon Valley is wont to do with regard to useful insights about business and technology—has been elevated to a law. Metcalfe’s law simply asserts an exponential relation between a network’s nodes and its value. The more users there are, the more valuable the existing connections. In other words, these companies got big extremely fast, and these networks tended toward monopoly and oligopoly. Meaning that if these firms could use marketing and low prices to expand their user bases exponentially, they could jump from zero to billion-dollar monopolies in a process that looks more like the flipping of a binary switch than growing a company.