Posted by David Post: The Fastest-Growing Thing: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_04_05-2009_04_11.shtml#1239314259
I'm in Boise, Idaho, of all places, at the moment, getting ready for a talk tomorrow (Jefferson's moose, the Internet, and all that), and I'm just wandering around and wondering about something (and I've found that when I'm wondering about something, VC readers can sometimes help me out). Has the Internet been the fastest-growing thing on the planet over the past 30 years or so? It's a funny question, but an interesting one, when you ask it like that. The Net's been growing pretty steadily at a rate of around 4-5% a month at least since 1980 or so -- say 30 years, going from a couple dozen machines to over 550 million. Is there anything else on earth that can match or better that, over that long a period? I can't think of anything. At least, I can't think of anything tangible. There may be intangible things -- like "computing power," for example, or maybe "human knowledge," or the like -- that kept up a growth rate this high over this long a period. But is there anything with real, material existence -- any population of bacteria, or grains of sand on a beach, or leaves on trees, or houses on a stretch of road, or ... that did so? And if not, that's got to amount to a pretty remarkable achievement -- to have built the fastest-growing thing on the planet? How did we do that? And who do we give the medals to? _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
