Network Effects

Where the value of a thing rises with the number of people using it — so that use attracts use, and the loop feeds itself.

A telephone with one user is worthless; with a million it is indispensable. That is the whole mechanism: the utility of a product, service, platform or language increases as more people take it up, which attracts more people, which increases the utility again. A positive feedback loop, and one of the few forces that can carry something from marginal to ordinary without anyone spending proportionally more (Emergence · Tipping Point Strategy).

For this Game the effect is directly load-bearing, because the things being spread are shared forms: a common vocabulary, a card shape everyone recognises, a rhythm two Cells can both keep, a standard that lets two bodies interoperate. Each of those gets better the more bodies hold it, and each is worth nothing held alone (The Language of LIØNSBERG · The same card shape · Minimum standards of interoperability · Interoperability · Pass The Flame). It is also why the strategy is islands, then a grid: an island is valuable on its own, but the step-change comes when the islands connect (Islands of Coherence · Islands, Hubs, Grid · Connect and Collaborate With Other Cells).

The same loop is why the old world's platforms are so hard to leave. Network effects do not care what they are attached to; they strengthen whatever holds them, which is how a service nobody likes becomes one nobody can exit, and how ownership of the network becomes ownership of the people on it (Manufactured Dependency · Centralization Of Power · Surveillance).

Hence the design rule that runs through the canon's technical choices: take the benefit of the loop while refusing the lock-in it usually carries. Keep the form open and copyable, keep the data in plain and portable files, and make leaving costless, so that the thing holds people because it serves them and not because it has trapped them (The open web · Technology Sovereignty · Screens and paper · Off switch · License).

Also called: the network effect Stands on: System · Emergence · Interoperability Opens onto: Islands, Hubs, Grid · Islands of Coherence · Tipping Point Strategy · Minimum standards of interoperability · Pass The Flame · Manufactured Dependency · The open web · Technology Sovereignty · Pillar VIII — Sacred Science and Technology In play: the Room and beyond — the reason a body adopts a shared form rather than a better private one Sources: Network Effects (root page, stub — a quoted definition carrying its lineage on the line) · lionsberg.wiki: Network Effects Open: The root page is a received definition with no LIØNSBERG reading attached; the application above is synthesis. · The canon nowhere estimates how many Cells are needed before the loop actually starts, which is the one number the strategy would want.