First there was the Stone Age. Then we learned how to manipulate and smelt metals, which led to an Agrarian age. From there, machines helped bring about the Industrial age, then the Space Age. So where are we now?
Shall we call it the Network Age?
Metcalfe’s Law holds that the value of a connected network, telecommunications in the parlance of his day, is proportional to the square of the number of connected users. Or stated more simply, the utility of a connected ‘thing’ increases as more and more ‘things’ are connected. The telephone acts as an easy example. One phone by itself is a paperweight, but one million connected to the same network is immeasurably powerful.