On Thu, Feb 01, 2001 at 04:08:16PM -0800, Ray Dillinger wrote:
ObCryptoStuff; this same kind of "critical mass" phenomenon affects lots and lots of the stuff we're looking at. Freenet, Mojo Nation, Napster, Gnutella, Digital Cash, etc, even PGP and GPG - All have a value that depends directly on how many other people are using them. If they don't grow beyond a certain threshold size, they remain less useful than the disk space they occupy. But where is the threshold and when is it passed?
This is a close cousin of what economists call network effects. As an area of study, it has received fairly extensive scrutiny. Me, I like what Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis have written about temporary monopolies. More on both subjects: http://www.politechbot.com/p-00607.html -Declan