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Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

> The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in "Metcalfe's law"--which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants--becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's.

Every time I read one of Krugman's technology-related articles, he always seems to get it so wrong. After this terrible prediction, I wonder why he keeps bothering.

Also, he's nothing but a political hack these days.

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Krugman often reviews his past predictions and admits when he is wrong: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31524-ten-years-later-...

Then why does he keep making them? And getting paid to make them? Generally if you are hired to do something, and fail at it multiple times, you are fired, and in the case of potentially moving markets and affecting livelihoods, you should be banned from ever saying anything again!

A fair question. It really sheds light on how most of the media make their money: by kicking up drama within the boundaries of our own belief systems, not by being accurate. He is hired to stir up the pot and he does that well, because we are poor at critical thinking.

We can learn this from the Chomsky/Zinn's media manipulation model.....

....or simply from Criswell's monologue to Ed Wood.

If you were to corner most newspaper editors, they would simply say "it's up to readers to do research and make up their minds" or "we provide a service by stimulating conversation and making you think." These are both true, but don't undo the damage caused by sending us careening around in fear and uncertainty by whipping us into perpetual emotional dissonance.

That's not what he's paid to do.

> most people have nothing to say to each other

I think this was more of a confirmation of Metcalfe's Law than anything else. Folks didn't use email (etc) as much in 1998 because it was less likely that your recipient would read it before you might contact them otherwise via phone or other method. No one sent email because no one checked email because the utility of the network wasn't there. As Metcalfe's Law predicts, the utility of the network was climbing steeply but just hadn't hit the inflection point where you could expect ubiquity.

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