Metacalf's Law and The Future of the Internet

The Web is information as both running software and the information contained within the software such as pictures. Information moves through networks in a variety of ways. A network consists of two or more computers that are linked in order to exchange files. There are two types of networks: a local network is limited to a geographic area of a computer lab or a school; while a wide network connects larger geographic areas such as North Carolina, or the United States.

Metcalfe's Law states that the value of any telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system. People could talk in both directions and with more than one conversation occurring simultaneously. An example of this would be you sending an email to your targeted recipients. The effect of this would be a network of 100 people is roughly 100 times as valuable as a network of only 10 people. The law has often been illustrated using the example of fax machines: a single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases with the total number of fax machines in the network, because the total number of people with whom each user may send and receive documents increases.

There are two main critics to Metcalfe's Law. Some say that the term value is not defined and can mean different things to different people. Others say that it assumes that connections in the network are all equal. I agree with Metacalfe's Law because i believe that a social network site such as Facebook, or Twitter, works the same way as the fax machine described above. The greater number of users with the service, the more valuable the service becomes to the community. Deriving from Metcalfe's Law, every new "friend" accepted or added on these social networking sites makes the user's profile ever more valuable in terms of the law.

I believe that five years from now the internet will be the number one main source where people get their information from, specifically social media sites such as Facebook, and Twitter. It's simple to me, people trust the word of the internet and their social media friends more and more each passing day. I hope that the future of the internet provides a better way to teach people the proper way of conducting research and not just plagiarizing someone's work other than their own. Let's hope the internet makes the human race smarter, not stupider and more dependent upon it.