About

In the School of Information (Incentive-centered Design) program at Michigan, we have a weekly lecture eries where speakers from Michigan and other universities talk about their current research. We had a few speakers come in from Northwestern this year and talk about their research. Professor Nicole Immorlica presented a paper on technological diffusion with compatibility. Her basic conclusion was that, in networks with compatibility, where an agent can adopt multiple technologies diffusion of superior technology is slower. She gave a few examples of instant messenger programs and language.

This struck me as interesting - in my undergrad work at MSU, I analyzed the telephony industry. In this industry, VoIP (Voice-over-IP) should have already taken the industry over. However, the diffusion of VoIP has been somewhat slow. This is partially due to regulatory and contractual reasons - problems such as E911 and CALEA (regulatory wiretapping regulations). However, despite this, diffusion still seems to be slower than it should be - the compatibility model seems to fit this situation well.

So, for fun, I made a model in NetLogo - A great peice of software that is used to conduct analysis of network growth models and diffusion.

Applet

You should see a java applet below that was constructed from a NetLogo model. To use the applet, first choose how you want to layout the network by clicking the Setup button {preferential attachment or random}. There should be three different colors of nodes: red nodes (Technology A), blue nodes (technology B) and purple nodes (A+B with converter).

powered by NetLogo

view/download model file: tech_diffusion_model.nlogo