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An economic term describing the effect that new
members of a network have on the existing ones. A network containing
one fax machine is useless, but as the number of machines added to it
increases, the more valuable each becomes. Thus the decision by a newcomer
to subscribe to the fax network increases the value of all the other
machines. This effect has been the driving force behind the internet, which
has become more and more useful a the number of people connecting to it has
grown. It has also introduced another, equally interesting, phenomenon : the
increasing value of knowledge. In the same way that the usefulness of a
language depends on the number of people who speak it, so the usefulness of
some kinds of information increases with their dissemination. This is one
reason for the rapid rate of development of internet technologies. |
