Moore, Metcalfe and Kurzweil

By conventional wisdom, the whole is almost always greater than the sum of its parts. For the Web, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, manifold. Take the main components that make it work - the users, the computational elements at their disposal, and the web.

Gordon Moore famously predicted 40 years back that the number of inexpensive computer transistors on a chip will double every two years. And it has been true ever since. The power held in the palm of one's hand today - in PDAs, Cellphones or Laptops - is so much more than what resided in top secret research facilities, filling a whole room, just a decade ago. And as Moore's law predicts, the pace of related innovations follows through. Adoption, inclusion and to an extent immersion do not remain an issue any more - everyone’s logged in!

Robert M. Metcalfe, co-inventor of the Ethernet, and founder of 3Com said

"The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n²)". Pointing out the similarity between a human neural network and the Web he further said "Just like a synapse between two neurons; the web spreads ideas from one person to another, connecting one brain to the second".

Over the course of time both these laws have helped shape technologies; physical hardware is constantly getting smaller and cheaper to produce, fueling more uses/users for devices - that’s Moore's Law. On the other hand, software and web aps are becoming increasingly user-driven, user-centric and user-friendly - making it easier for Networks to expand and evolve between these technologies - that's Metcalfe's Law.

Another pioneer, this time in artificial intelligence - Raymond Kurzweil - estimated that the human brain's networked intelligence produces the equivalent of 1016 computations per second. In fact its superiority is pricesely not because of its neural capabilities, but because of its networking capabilities. In other words, the brain is 106x104, or 1010, times smarter than it should be, simply because it is networked.

So, as a sum of its parts, Web 2.0 is a more composite and functionally relevant tool today than ever before. And because this kind of connectivity lets you extend beyond geography and time, the talent pool at its reach is phenomenal, with collaborations and connections that can happen across geography, age, sex or race. In no other era of human civilization has there ever been a platform for ideas to be shared or conversations to be had - with such ease and immediacy - without the other senses getting in the way.

The transition of Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 is an evolution from micro to macro, from the plurality of siloed desktops to the singularity of networks. If Web 1.0 was the evolution of web capabilities in siloed clusters, Web 2.0 is the actualization of those capabilities in networks.