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Myths about Internet growth
An anonymous reader writes "An article in The Economist outlines WorldCom's role in starting the myth that Internet traffic doubles every 100 days. This helped inflate the telecoms bubble."
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The problem with this article, as well as the original Worldcom estimate, is that they assume linear growth. In reality, the demand for Internet bandwidth grows and shrinks with the economy in general. We're in a slump right now, so growth has slowed down. In the next boom, more people will want to download rich content such as video, which will in turn increase the demand for bandwidth.
Like the stock market, the bandwidth market has its up times and its down times. When you invest in the stock market, you invest for the long-term trend which historically has been up. In the same way, the need for bandwidth will continue to grow over the long term as we continue to find new and cool things to do with it.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
-- Bartlett, as quoted in my 1st year physics textbook
How many other "marketing-oriented" "facts" are being touted today as justification for business, hiring, tactical, or hiring strategies? Or to be cruder, how many other business lies are out there mucking things up?
There's a re-evaluation of business tactics and laws going on. Maybe its time to re-evaluate supposed technological "truths" as well.
And maybe we techies can use this as yet another example of the hype over reality in technology, since WorldCom is in the use. Next time someone non-technical tosses out something obviously ridiculous, bring THIS up and ask them where they got their idea.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Its simply because people trust statistics from any sort of authority figure.
If the PRESIDENT says something, people assume he MUST be right.
If says "our industry is growing FAST FAST FAST", people will believe it. This appears to be how bubbles form (Enron, Worlcom, etc). People will believe statistics if they seem somewhat reasonable and come from what appears to be a reputable source.
Besides, this doubling every 100 days figure seemed like a great concept to latch onto (gee, humanity is becoming more connected...thats great!)
So I guess the answer IMO, is that people ARE just getting caught up in excitement.
This kind of thing happens all the time. Sometimes it's an honest mis-statement or a result of unstated assumptions. Sometimes it's a blatant lie. The perception of the false comment's status generally depends on your political views. (For example, a Republican would be suspicious of Clintonian whoppers, while a Democrat would be forgiving; and the opposite dynamic would hold with Republican political statements.)
That said, the reason that most people swallow them whole is because people believe what they hear from figures deemed "in authority", such as politicians, CEOs, doctors, and the mainstream media. All, interestingly enough, of these sources have egos the size of Texas and consciences the size of Guam. Why do people trust authority figures, given that there is every rational and historical reason to distrust them instead? Probably has an evolutionary basis (in that cohesive groups had better odds of survival, and adherence to authority in a crisis increased the cohesiveness of the group). In fact, the military deliberately teaches officers and non-coms the tone and style of speach needed to get instant obedience.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
This issue (a dubious statistic repeated infinitely in press) results from the fact that facts are not checked thoroughly before publication. This sort of stuff happened with the stats the women's movement used, environmentalists, conservative groups, etc. The number of women dying from eating disorders was a classic error that was endlessly cycled and never questioned until the misconception was permanently rooted in the public consciousness.
Every interest group pushing an agenda (yes, even profit-seeking corporations seeking to sell more bandwith) seems to come up with some dubious statistic like this. The media gobble up press releases, disguised oftentimes as "studies" which are bought and paid for by the interest group, and they spit them out on in the newspapers and other media outlets, sometimes virtually unchanged.
I am not surprised by the Economist's story -- I am surprised that it took so long for it to make it into print. I wonder how many times the Economist itself published that same "fact" before discovering that the emporer had no clothes.
Lots of petrified grits
Rival telecoms companies believed the myth and cited UUNET's figures, even if their own traffic figures disagreed.
I find it disturbing that these rival telecom companies aren't making their own decisions. "Tech: Sir, we are only using 3% of our bandwidth and 45% of the nations traffic traverse our networks. CEO: Damnit, can't you hear? We need more bandwidth!! MOORRRREEE!!!!"
"I bet I'll get blamed for this." --Mayor Quimby
most people swallow them whole is because people believe what they hear from figures deemed "in authority", such as politicians, CEOs, doctors, and the mainstream media.
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right.
-- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I think what happened a few years ago was that the price was pushed below the sustainable level by VCs indirectly financing your bandwidth. For a couple of years I had a deal that actually cost me nothing whatsoever for my internet connection; actually it saved me 10% of my telephone line rental as well.
What's happened now is the VCs have gone away and the price has bounced back to where it really should have been in the first place and the companies supplying bandwidth are turning a profit again. For companies profit is like breathing- you can hold your breath for only so long and then you die; the companies are breathing again; but looks like some held their breath for too long.
However the cost per bit is going down all the time, and we should gradually see the price that we pay come down with it. (Should being the key part of that sentence ;-)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"