Global Colonization of Smartphones
This article references the spread of technology (in particular smart phones) on a global scale from a network perspective of 7 billion people. The first question to ask ourselves is how did we go from sending postcards to instant messaging on our smartphones in just a few decades? According to the article smartphones are on track to becoming the fastest spreading technology in the history of mankind, while in just 1982, there were approximately 4.6 billion people in the world, but not a single mobile-phone subscriber or user. There are seven billion people in the world today with six billion of them subscribed to a mobile cellular-phone subscription. It took almost a century for landline phones to spread to just a minority of the world’s population, so how exactly did this smartphone “spread” occur so quickly? To answer this question we need an in depth understanding of cascading behaviors in networks which is a topic covered in lecture.
Cascading in a networking context refers to the notion of gradual conformity to a particular thing whether it be a product, a service or a behavior in any network or social context. We learn that cascading is a consequence of an individual making choices based on what other people do. However, we should note that network cascading of smartphones begins on a local(small) scale before dispersing on to a global(large) space and it does so quite quickly with the presence of mediums like the internet which is something we didn’t have 30 to 40 years ago. In the context of networking we need to understand that we are not necessarily purchasing smartphones on the basis of what the world thinks of us having it, but rather how the people that surround us think of us and how them having one also affects us (in other words direct benefits we get from purchasing one e.g. saving up on monthly phone bills by just paying for data to use on messaging applications e.t.c) thus people purchase smartphones based on the number of people around them that have it.
We will explain cascading behavior in terms of a network structure with us people being the nodes and our connections to each other being the basis for the cascading. Similarly to game theory(also taught in lecture)benefits of either using a smartphone or an old mobile phone could be referred to as payoffs to the person who wants to purchase the smartphone, say payoffs “a” and “b”. In addition to the payoffs a and b, we can introduce “p” which is the fraction of our friends, family members, neighbors or work colleagues who have the new smartphone. According to cascading principles in networking, we will only decide to buy the new smartphone if our value of p is greater than or equal to “q” (which is typically calculated as; b/a+b but often only in a game theory context) which is a value that signifies the least fraction of our friends that have bought the new smartphone so as to indicate that we should buy it too, because it would be easier to communicate with them. Now, lets try to conceptualize an example, let’s say that a smartphone company starts off with a few million shipments to a particular country and lets say that each person in said country has a q value equal to 6/10 or 3/5 (that is to say that a person only buys the new smartphone when 6 out of 10 of their closest friends have the new smartphone), so if there are 7 of your friends with the new smartphone then you would like to buy it, since your value of p is equal to 7/10 and 7/10>6/10. The q-value could also be based on the fact that the new smartphone allows you all to get a group discount price on the phone bill on a minimum of 6 people. This purchasing happens gradually but quickly, sort of like a chain reaction as more people hear that their friends have one, they will be more inclined to get one and in a matter of time majority of the world would then have smartphones.
Sources:
- http://www.technologyreview.com/news/427787/are-smart-phones-spreading-faster-than-any-technology-in-human-history/: This is an article that elaborates on the continuous global spread of smartphones (page 1 of 2)
- http://www.technologyreview.com/news/427787/are-smart-phones-spreading-faster-than-any-technology-in-human-history/page/2/ : This is an article that elaborates on the continuous global spread of smartphones (page 2 of 2)