Transcontinental Railroad?

Can the social graph become the transcontinental railroad for America and the rest of the world?

• Railroad to the Sharing Economy The transcontinental railroad democratized access to both coasts, making it more efficient for Americans to capitalize on the frontier that was the West. Lots of trading and sharing was built on top of that access. Once steel manufacturing hit scale, the modern day city was born, built on top of the railroad. Railroad being the key infrastructure that powered the early entrepreneurship and pioneering. The social graph--created by Facebook--democratizes access to real people. Can lots of trading and sharing be built on top of that access (ex: and ) enabling individuals and not corporations to capitalize on personal comparative advantages? Can the social graph as a utility/infrastructure help power the next American Frontier?

• Answer:

  I know you like this metaphor a lot Chris, but I think it is fundamentally limited. At a coarse level, yeah sure, it can open up a new economic era and fuel the next wave of development, but that's really about as far as it goes. There are some detailed lessons to be learned about how to empower large masses of people at once, and enable the colonization of previously uncolonized riches, but at the detail level, the Internet seems to me to be very different in its fundamental dynamics.