Bytes: The Internet and Near-Zero Marginal Cost

Radio could broadcast the same message to everyone at once. The next arbitrage let every person send a different message to anyone else, at almost no cost. Innovation followed quickly, and new business models with it.

Key Milestones

• ARPANET, 1969. The first operational packet-switched network connected four university computers, the earliest working piece of what became the internet.
• The World Wide Web, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee. A simple system of linked documents turned a research network into something almost anyone could use, not just programmers.
• Video communication, from AT&T's Picturephone in 1964 to FaceTime in 2010. Real-time video finally let a conversation carry a face as well as a voice, without either person leaving their room.

The Energy, Social, and Economic Impact of Bytes

In 2005, roughly 16% of the world's population was online. By 2017, 48%. By 2023, 67%, better than two out of three people on Earth. We are not aware of a prior technology that reached that share of humanity as quickly.

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What makes the internet different is not speed, it is the marginal cost. A telegraph was billed by the word, a satellite call by the minute. An email or a video call, once the network exists, costs almost nothing to send again. That is what started the modern technology era, the world of smartphones and social media as we know it.

Information delivery had finally been arbitraged down to nearly free.