The Awesome Science of Chinonomics

There used to be a time when the internet was not a winner-take-all mad dash for world dominance. Steven Johnson taught me that.   In the beginning, developers of the foundations of the interwebs created open protocols for the benefit of all, free of charge. Many times under the auspices of the government. That internet still lives on in the guts of what we all experience online nowadays. You just don't realize it, because you pay no licensing fee for the use of the HTTP protocol. No company profits from your use of email protocols POP, SMTP or IMAP, either. They're just there. Built for your benefit by someone who was not tying to hit the next unicorn and become a billionaire (or trillionaire ?). Johnson calls it "InternetOne": the layer of the internet created by distributing its benefits to everyone who cares to join. Cryptocurrencies are an example of it. They distribute the benefits among those participate (through mining) so the network grows. Capitalis...

Are we all lazy creatures? Some would say we always look for shortcuts to obtain what we want --even in the most disciplined version of ourselves. The path of least resistance defines our every move. The behavior goes deeper than what we see in our penchant to become couch potatoes. The brain also is always looking for ways to do the same tasks in the most efficient (effortless) way possible. Amblyopia  is an example of the brain turning off the visual signal in one eye, choosing to overdevelop the other to compensate the loss of vision in the first one. There have been reported cases of people losing hearing in one ear without any apparent reason while at the same time overdeveloping the other ear. When the brain realizes that it can accomplish the same task with less resources, it appears it decides to shut down redundancies. But what happens when a redundancy in the brain is created by an external agent? Some discovery -fire-, some tool -utensils-, some technology created for...

How important is it to feel like you belong? To many of us, very important. We are social animals that constantly feel the need to be accepted . Religion, sports teams fan clubs, political parties. All examples of groups of people that share something in common. Networks of people. The concept goes beyond human association based on interests or values. Networks are formed around the use of common instruments: languages, gadgets, credit cards. Why join a network? Because you benefit from the fact that other people belong to that very same club. As a non-native English speaker, you learn English because the world of international business speaks English, not Russian, Greek or Arabic. You get a Visa Card instead of a Discover or Diners Club because you want to have access to the biggest network of POS in the world (87% of merchants worldwide accept it). You buy a gasoline-powered vehicle instead of one using Natural Gas because you want access to the well-established network of gas...