In 1998, he and Kerry Coffman were the first to show that one of the great inspirations for the Internet bubble, the myth of "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days," was false.[5]
In the paper "Content is Not King", published in First Monday in January 2001,[6] he argues that
and therefore that entertainment "content" is not the killer app for the Internet.
In 2012, he became a fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research[7] and in 2013 of the American Mathematical Society.
Network value
In the 2006 paper "Metcalfe's Law is Wrong",[8] Andrew Odlyzko and coauthors argue that the incremental value of adding one person to a network of n people is approximately the nth harmonic number, so the total value of the network is approximately n * log(n). Since this curves upward (unlike Sarnoff's law), it implies that Metcalfe's conclusion – that there is a critical mass in networks, leading to a network effect – is qualitatively correct. But since this linearithmic function does not grow as rapidly as Metcalfe's law, it implies that many of the quantitative expectations based on Metcalfe's law were excessively optimistic.
For example, by Metcalfe, if a hypothetical network of 100,000 members has a value of $1M, doubling its membership would increase its value fourfold (200,0002/100,0002). However Odlyzko predicts its value would only slightly more than double: 200,000*log(200,000)/(100,000*log(100,000).[8] Empirical tests, in part stimulated by this criticism, strongly support Metcalfe's law.[9]
Financial History
In recent years, Odlyzko has published multiple papers on the financial history of bubbles, particularly the South Sea Bubble and the English Railway Mania of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, respectively.[10][11][12][13]
^An undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is: Bubbles and gullibility, A. Odlyzko. Financial History, no. 132, Winter 2020, pp. 16-19
^Odlyzko, Andrew (2018-08-29). "Newton's financial misadventures in the South Sea Bubble". Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science. 73 (1). The Royal Society: 29–59. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2018.0018. ISSN0035-9149.