Another Quiet Day

Why Laws are Bollocks

Bob Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet, is known for pointing out that the total value of a communications network grows with the square of the number of devices or people it connects. This scaling law, along with Moore's Law, is widely credited as the stimulus that has driven the stunning growth of Internet connectivity. Because Metcalfe's law implies value grows faster than does the (linear) number of a network's access points, merely interconnecting two independent networks creates value that substantially exceeds the original value of the unconnected networks. Thus the growth of Internet connectivity, and the openness of the Internet, are driven by an inexorable economic logic, just as the interconnection of the telephone network was forced by AT&T's long distance strategy. This strategy created huge and increasing value to AT&T customers, based on the same (then unnamed) law of increasing returns to scale at the beginning of the 20th century. In the same way, the global interconnection of networks we call the Internet has created huge and increasing value to all its participants.

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That quote is from That Sneaky Exponential—Beyond Metcalfe's Law to the Power of Community Building by David P. Reed.

I figured that given the recent hubbub around Metcalfe's Law I'd throw out a pointer to its followup which I find more relevant these days, in these times of morons clumping together in social networks.

Because group formation is just as important as link formation.

Baldur Bjarnason – 19/8/06