Value growth through use…

I’ve been reading through some selected quotes on Rogue Moon from the O’Reilly P2P Conference earlier this month. This comment by Dan Bricklin really clicked with me:

“When you’re designing something, think of how its value will grow with use… It is possible to build systems where additional use and new users bring value to all – and P2P is the key in many cases.” -Dan Bricklin, co-creator of Visicalc, writer, and software designer

Thinking about it, I’m realizing that all the ‘killer apps’ of the last couple of centuries are about building systems whose value increases with use.

Think about Napster or the Web or email… or the Telephone or the automobile or the stock market… or printed money… or printing in general…

…or written history – oral history for that matter…

…or language in general…

They’re all killer apps. They all increase in value with increased use…

And they’re all decentralized P2P apps. I think it’s human nature that’s at work here, and not marketing spins, not eyeball counts, not patents, politics or placation – just our inate need for social interaction, which is necessarily confined by the environment in which we live.

(And don’t even get me started on the potential recursions…)

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