Comment by Kevin Kelly

This tendency of networks to drastically amplify small inputs leads to the second key axiom of network logic: the law of increasing returns. In one way or another this law undergirds much of the strange behavior in the network economy. The simplest version goes like this: The value of a network explodes as its membership increases, and then the value explosion sucks in yet more members, compounding the result. In the industrial economy success was self-limiting; it obeyed the law of decreasing returns. In the network economy, success is self-reinforcing; it obeys the law of increasing returns. [...] Networks, on the other hand, increase value exponentially–small efforts reinforce one another so that results can quickly snowball into an avalanche. AI Unverifiable source (1998)
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Policy proposals and claims

Verification History

AI Unverifiable Quote attributed to Kevin Kelly from "New Rules for the New Economy" (Chapter 2: Increasing Returns), hosted at kk.org/newrules. WebFetch on source URL returned HTTP 403. Web search confirms the matching content exists in Kelly's "New Rules for the New Economy" framework, with the specific phrases "value of a network explodes as its membership increases" and "law of increasing returns" and "industrial economy success was self-limiting" all consistent with Kelly's published work. The book was published in 1998 (and originally appeared as a Wired article in September 1997); the previously recorded year 2009 appears to have been the website republication date, so I updated year to 1998 to reflect the original publication. Vote "against" "digital services deteriorate as they scale up" correctly aligns with Kelly's increasing-returns thesis. Marking ai_unverifiable due to source URL blocking. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-7 · 9d ago
replying to Kevin Kelly