Recently an intriguing research report was published suggesting that in religion has the same chances in the long run as the Dodo bird.
The research was presented to the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas and was authored by Daniel M. Abrams Haley A. Yaple and Richard J. Wiener. For the mathematically minded and truly curious, you’ll find the full document below.
For the rest, here’s a quick summary and explanation. The foundation of the research is quite simple. The “network effect” is a widely observed non-linear phenomena that posits that the value of a group or network increases with the number of individuals within that group.
There are a myriad applications of the network effect. The most intuitive for us to understand is language. Languages are living breathing things that are born, change, evolve and ultimately die. The popularity of a specific language, say English, varies according to the value that it offers the person who speaks it.
There is little value to be gained by learning to speak a language that few speak. But much to be gained if we learn a language that opens doors around the world. As the group of English language speakers grows, so does the value of learning to speak English. And so, with each new English speaker that joins the group, the network effect creates a virtuous feedback loop increasing the utility of English.
The reverse can also be observed as a language is abandoned. Once enough people stop using it, the network effect goes into reverse and it declines quite rapidly as it loses value in a non-linear fashion. In fact, Abrams, one of the authors of this research study applied a similar model to language in a study published in 2003.
We can also observe the network effect in many online communities. For example, the incredible rise and popularity of social networks like twitter and facebook. As well as the quick death of myspace (as people migrated to facebook and others).
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