A nifty information pattern shows up in today’s tech news:
An important underlying principle in congestion control and network optimization is that every user has a “utility function.” A little bandwidth is worth a lot per bit. An SMS text message can easily cost 0.01 cents per bit, and is obviously worth more to the user, or he wouldn’t be sending them. Nobody would be pirating DVDs at this price, though, as this is almost $1,000,000 per GB. So the “utility” of extra bits decreases as you get more of them. The trouble is, the core of the Internet has no idea whether any particular packet holds those expensive SMS bits or those throw-away DVD pirating bits. ^
This pattern is eternal as the universe, as it’s one of the building blocks of the universe. To avoid entropy, no two things are ever equal. If things get equal, which they would if they ever existed in an absolute or universal sense, there would be no ability for energy to move between states as opportunities opened or failures happened. This universe needs tragedy and hope as the foundations of its locally unstable and chaotic, but globally stable and orderly, design.
This is why in business we have trouble coming up with an absolute or universal value for a tomato. First, that value must be measured in currency which itself changes in value; second, a buyer must be found. Finally, that buyer has different needs and abilities. To a poor person, a tomato is only worth so much before they give up and buy a rutabaga; to a wealthy person, the quality of the tomato determines its value; to a starving man on a desert island, a tomato is worth more than our wildest dreams.