Massachusetts Institute of Technology
METCALFE'S LAW MEETS COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
A discussion led by Bob Metcalfe '68
Wednesday, September 20, 2006 4:00-5:30 pm
NE20-336 (3 Cambridge Center)
A
video of this talk is available (Requires Real Player 8.0)
Abstract
Metcalfe's Law has held since 1980 that V~N^2: the value of a network
grows as
the square of its number of users. Moore's Law is often paired with
Metcalfe's,
though he two laws are different in that Moore is exponential in
time while
Metcalfe is quadratic in size. Also, Moore's Law has been numerically
true
since 1965 while Metcalfe's Law has never been set to numbers--it's
a vision
thing, claims Metcalfe. Now, as Metcalfe's Law attracts new waves
of attackers,
Metcalfe attempts to give his old law new life by having it "recurse
down the
long tail of social networking." There are also promising applications
in the
emerging science of collective intelligence.
Speaker bio
Bob Metcalfe, MIT class of 1968, is the inventor of Ethernet, founded
3Com
Corporation, and wrote InfoWorld's Internet column during the 1990s.
He is
currently a partner at Polaris Venture Partners. In 2005, he received
the
National Medal of Technology.
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