Decision-makers, experts and laymen in different historical periods and in different socio-economic systems shared at least one desire: to know their future in advance or even to influence it for their advantage. They have used very different approaches and methods from spiritual/religious ones...

We consider dynamic competition among platforms in a market with network externalities. A platform that dominated the market in the previous period becomes "focal" in the current period, in that agents play the equilibrium in which they adopt the focal platform whenever such equilibrium exists....