Reed’s law shows that technological networks that support the formation of social networks make for a value that not only increases dramatically, but which shifts the importance of the kind of “content” the network favors.
Digital, ubiquitous, broadband, many-to-many media from netcafes to handheld devices shifts importance from publication—the broadcast model that the motion picture and recording industries would love to hold on to—to social communications. Not only is social communication a bigger business than entertainment, but people are learning to use new media to construct new social arrangements.
A literacy is emerging among hundreds of millions of people that involves email, text messages, instant messages, chat, message boards, listservs, blogs, search engines.