I don't believe that any one of the laws can accurately determine the value of a network with all of the different variables we have today. However, I think that Reed's Law comes the closest to giving us the best estimate. Reed's Law basically states that a network size can increase exponentially determined by the number of users. I think this is a good estimate of a networks value because of how we see things go viral on the internet. If one person shares it to two people, then those people can share it to two more friends and so on. This is especially accurate on social media sites where one person can instantly share something to hundreds of people with the click of a button. However, this doesn't mean that every one of those people on theirs friends list will share or even see the content. This is why it makes it very difficult to determine an accurate measure of a networks value. With people using multiple social networks such as twitter, facebook, instagram, etc. it becomes even more difficult to measure a networks value.
In the next five years I believe that people will get their information the same way we do today, maybe just a little more streamlined. With more and more content becoming available online we may see a decrease in things such as physical magazines, books, and newspapers. It seem like more of these types of media keep moving to an online format that can easily be accessed from someones phone or computer. As more people access these things online the physical copies will become less common and may eventually go away all together. I'm sure we will see the development of more news applications and social networks in the next five years and there is no telling how they will impact how information is exchanged. It may get to the point where you can instantly share something to all of your social media sites at the same time, or maybe a social network that makes all others obsolete will come along. Either way, I feel that the process of gathering and sharing information will become faster and easier in the next five years.
I think it's interesting that you considered the total demise of print in the next few years. This is a possibility I hadn't thought of. I mentioned the likelihood of baby boomers taking over the mainstream social media climate, at least by what we call that today. But your idea is a kind of logical next step to this. It might be something more like 15 years, but if the baby boomers are getting all of their information online, and their parents are all but extinct, who will be left that wants to read print? I think the print industry may be reserved almost exclusively for advertising and marketing purposes.
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