Gift article:
By a network I mean a social arrangement held together by what economists call [network externalities] — situations in which people find it convenient to engage in some activity because many other people are doing the same thing. A commonplace example is the long-running dominance of [Excel spreadsheets]; I don’t know anyone who loves Excel, but businesses keep using it largely because everyone else is using it.
A less mundane example — indeed, one wrapped in a lot of mystical thinking — is the international role of the dollar.
