Selling Social Media by Daniel Faltesek

Author:Daniel Faltesek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Figure 3.1 Monetization matrix with disruption.

Moore’s law is perhaps the most famous of indexical arguments about technology.45 The public formulation of the argument: computing power doubles every eighteen months, so it is safe to assume that computational limits will be transcended. In a more technical sense, the number of transistors in a given space doubles every eighteen months. This was true. Engineering changes. Increasingly power is dependent not on transistor density by on cooling. Chips work better (or worse). Heat dissipates. Each individual electrical action requires heat to be produced between two points, even of those points are very close together. The hotter the transmission medium, the more resistance: more resistance, more heat. A feedback loop. Electric stove burners work on this principle. As electricity is applied to the resistor (the coil) it gets hot. The most recent innovations in extreme speed processing are increasingly not focused on using more transistors or even different structures of busses and chips, but in enhanced liquid cooling systems.46 Although Moore’s argument is referred to as Moore’s law, it is not a scientific law. It isn’t ideal gas law or Ohm’s law. Moore’s Law only has force because it has disavowed the dimension of electrical engineering as dissipating heat in favor of a form of technological power. The inexorable march of processing power is a much more stable referent than the increased dissipation of heat or a multifaceted discussion of processing design. It is a slogan for exponential growth. Perhaps the most telling, Dan Woods, a contributor to Forbes magazine, used the phrase “creates a Moore’s Law for data” to describe the indexical relationship inherent in increased production of information.47 Even in a world where the basic idea of doubling computing power is no longer true, Moore’s Law still means a great deal.48

The appearance of Metcalfe’s law, the idea that larger networks are more valuable, becomes a practical ontological truth through the disavowal of its origin in network math.49 Larger networks are larger: they have more nodes and more edges connecting them. Networks are not symmetrically valuable; in fact often times distant notes can be a drain on the center of a network—meaning that Metcalfe’s law only really make sense when edges and vertexes have some real value. Although an airline network diagram might show Miami, Dallas, and Austin as three nodes, they are quite different. Dallas and Miami are hubs for a major airline; Austin is a small city destination. Networks are uneven. Some nodes are worth more than others. Some connections cost more than others. Attempts at evaluating network centrality demonstrate this problem. There is no universal method for determining what the most important node in a network.50 Determining the correct measure of centrality depends on an evaluation of the network and what centrality really means.

Evgeny Morozov uses a similar argument in his critique of internet-centrism—the internet is a real thing, but its characteristics as a physical system are often ignored for the purposes of treating it as a magical source of energy and action.

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