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The physics department has replaced the traditional large introductory lecture with smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning. Last fall, after years of experimentation and debate and resistance from students, who initially petitioned against it, the department made the change permanent. Already, attendance is up and the failure rate has dropped by more than 50 percent.

But just as Moore's Law hits physical constraints, network effects have a limit in many types of online communities. Indeed, in some cases, a reverse network effect may exist: as new people join, others are motivated to leave.

I constantly meet really smart non-technical people -- doctors, lawyers, teachers -- who have no clue how computers work. They treat them as magic black boxes that randomly break and never make sense. Why? Because software is a fundamentally different kind of system. It does not behave like the other things around us that we are used to.