"During the nineteen-forties, a major problem began to appear in the telephone-switching network. As the number of subscribers increased, the complexity of the network increased even faster. Some of the switching was done manually. It had been jokingly said, that soon everyone in the country would be working for the telephone company as telephone operators," recalls Willard Boyle, inventor of CCD technology, at AT&T Bell Labs.
The Internet, Sockpuppets, and the Broken Tail
Why is the Internet like Zimbabwe ... a country where 12 million people survive in a turbulent, informal market, dominated by wealthy dictators, with 11 million percent inflation, and no rule of law?
Because the Internet is just as perversely unequal and unstable; with 1 billion people online, spending per capita is only 33 cents per day and the top 100 businesses accrue more than half of that; reputations to mitigate trade risk are earned in walled-gardens, like Amazon or eBay, and much activity is designed to game the system in order to earn a reputation above and beyond a person’s worth.
Download the introductory report here.
