Today’s internet is an Internet of Beefs. Flat, global networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are overrun by memetic epidemics — harassment mobs, disinformation, conspiracy theories, alternative facts, troll farms, state actors, ransomware, extremists. How is it that Wikipedia, with its cooperative ownership, has not been overrun by these... See more
The massive dissemination of information — and I would argue a large contributor to a network’s massive value — comes from the ability of information to jump from one subnetwork of users to another. On Twitter, the jumping function is the retweet. A person who lives and breathes technology tweets about a new streaming music service called Spotify,... See more
The fundamental disruption of the Internet has been to turn this dynamic on its head. First, the Internet has made distribution (of digital goods) free, neutralizing the advantage that pre-Internet distributors leveraged to integrate with suppliers. Secondly, the Internet has made transaction costs zero, making it viable for a distributor to... See more
ASU embraces a high acceptance rate, admitting 86 percent of applicants, compared to Harvard’s 5 percent. Far from “lowering their standards,” Crow and Dabars see this as a fulfillment of their mission to provide a quality, affordable education to more people. The high acceptance rate is a starting point for ASU, not a backwards reflection of their... See more
New technologies will completely dissolve the line between virtual and in-person, so that your favorite celebrity becomes just another member of your friend group.