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| Joined: | Mon Nov 21st, 2005 |
| Location: | California USA |
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I stepped out for dinner, and so, upon returning, I can work at connecting the concept of connectivity to my topic title, which is Joe's Law.
Repeating Joe's Law:
Power produced into a state of oversupply reduces the price of power while purchasing power increases, because power reduces the cost of production.
Information is power.
Information produced into a state of oversupply reduces the price of information while purchasing power increases, because information reduces the cost of production.
How about the invention of a new secret source of power, such as fire, in the past, or such as something as yet not invented today, and we can call this secret source of power a widget.
A. Fire spreading like wildfire through human society in the past.
B. The widget connecting each new user, not yet using one, to each old user, currently using one, of the widgets, if it is hypothetically invented today, right now.
In the case of fire there may have been a few users who didn't want their knowledge falling into the wrong hands, or a few people wanted to sell the idea, patent it, collect royalties, and even pass on the patents, and the royalties to his, or her, decedents. Fire traveled, when human beings started using it, and human beings have undergone a process by which they didn't use it, and then they did use it, and the before and after, cause and effect, is a measurable increase in leverage, or economic capacity, or productivity, or more benefit for less cost, and at first there were the halves, and at first there were the halve-nots, and the haves, by some means, some connection, some medium, transferred the information to the have-nots, and the point here is to point out the physical properties of the medium. How fast or slowly does the information about fire travel through the entire human social structure, what explains, or quantifies, the resistance between each human being during the process by which the information about fire travels from the first fire user to everyone else?
In the past the medium was time and distance, and not much more than human self propulsion, walking, and running. Society A gains the power today. Society B gains the power a century later, or even later, or sooner, depending upon how fast the information travels by human self propulsion, or by coincidental invention. The measure of resistance is great, difficult to imagine.
There is another useful concept that can be borrowed from physics called the path of least resistance.
Today a person may invent the widget, and suppose that the widget is remarkably powerful, a revolutionary power source, and we can quantify that for the purpose of gaining a relative measure of it - a hypothetical illustrative fabrication of fiction.
Suppose the widget, once a person has the plans of it transferred to him, or her, costs an average weeks pay check to construct, at any average home, anywhere on earth, out of average materials, and then suppose, since the idea here is to invent an illustratively very powerful new thing, suppose that the weeks work of average work constructs something that produces an average rate of electricity consumption for an average home, and the widget keeps on working, and doesn't wear out, not yet, none yet have worn out, it is estimated to keep running for 20 years, conservatively, and the new user who begins using the widget at home, uses CO2 and sunlight as the fuel that is consumed during the process of producing electricity, and just for added effect, again to illustrate the point that I'm intending to point out, that the same device produces a large quantity of waste that can be used to replace the gasoline that is used to run modern motor vehicles, and we can quantify that waste product to be enough waste to fuel an average car, running an average total miles, for an average year, which is a rate of waste production, not a total quantity. Once built the thing keeps using CO2, using Sunlight, and it keeps on producing a significant rate of electric power, and a significant rate of waste that can be burned up in the process of moving cars over roads.
So the person receiving the plans for the widget, spends a weeks worth of effort, and receives something that will generate and continue to generate enough electric power to run his home, and enough waste material that can be disposed of by burning all that waste material in the car by driving the car all over the place, or sell the waste to other people if too much waste piles up and the user of the new widget doesn't drive enough to get rid of all the waste piling up around the widget as it continues turning CO2 and Sunlight into electricity.
1. Cost = one average weeks pay.
2. Benefit = constant supply of electricity
3. Waste = constant supply of motor fuel disposed of in the process of burning the waste in cars driving all over the place, or selling the waste to people who burn it up in cars driving all over the place.
So what can possibly explain the resistance, if there is any, between the first person who invents the widget, uses it, and the next person, and the next person, and the next?
How is the resistance between the first and the last person to use the widget measured, what is the physical properties of the medium between the people who have and the people who do not have the widget during the process by which the plans, or the examples, of the widgets pass from the first person to all the rest of the people?
What would you do with those plans? What keeps those plans from passing to the next person after you?
What happens to the human species, as a whole, if the widget is invented today, and next week everyone has their widget up and running?
What is the nature, the physical nature, of the medium in between each person who is connected by the widget invention, over time, and will anyone be seeking the path of least resistance if someone does not yet have one, but wants one?
Does that manage to connect the topic title to the concept of a connecting medium, such as water, or air, or a network, or a legal fiction?