Quote from: smooth on July 19, 2014, 02:36:42 AM

Also, the starting points seem arbitrary to me. The internet was not in 30% of households within 5 years of its invention. I doubt the starting year for PCs as well. I think someone chose some arbitrary starting years to tell a story.

If we plot some metric for adoption such as price as I did (which Peter R showed is scaling at square of adoption via Metcalf's law), then we need a log scale vertical access to see the early portion of S shape.

On these percentage charts we should see for logistic a ramp up early, then a flattening to linear by 50% adoption, then a ramp down. Whereas for logistic, we should see a ramp down from the start.

The decentralized ones are clearly logistic and the ones that are heavily regulated are not. For example, the auto started logistic, but them failed to remain so (clearly as government regulation set in, because they require government roads).

The clothes washer is decentalized but not logistic. I suspect it is an issue with replacement goods. The laundrymat replaces that damn thing you can't carry around with you as you move.

Here is another one appears to show 30% internet adoption at about 8+ years. Shows the computer reaching 50+% adoption over 50+ years.

The reason consumption spreads faster today is because of human productivity is exponential and thus goods are becoming a smaller percentage of our income. Remember upthread I pointed out that Iron was a precious metal in the past.

Now we are moving past the physical industrial age (physical goods will become almost free to produce) and towards the knowledge age where we compete on increasing productivity in the intangible realm of knowledge (designs, software, etc).