October 7th, 2008
The Three Laws of Networked Technologies
Welcome to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my combined feed in a feed reader or by e-mail and you'll never miss a single post. Thanks for visiting!
(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog - How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)
While reading through chapter 2 of Howard Rheingold’s ‘Smart Mobs’, I started thinking about how the three laws of networked technologies (Sarnoff’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law and Reed’s Law) relate to social media in BRIC countries –
1. Sarnoff’s Law: The value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers (n).
2. Metcalfe’s Law: The value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n2).
3. Reed’s Law: The value of a group forming network (or a social network) increases exponentially, proportional to 2 raised to the power the number of users in the network (2n).
In Sarnaff’s network, the only communication possible is one-to-many. In Metcalfe’s network, the only communication possible is one-to-one. In Reed’s network, all types of communication are possible, including one-to-one, many-to-many and some-to-some, so it’s effectively any-to-any.
