Dean's Law is something I just made up.

Dean's Law holds that, at some point, even the up-take on a wildly popular product will slow. A bandwagon rolls and grows, it loses its intimacy and immediacy, and suddenly there's resistance to it. Getting past that resistance requires, not more noise, but more intimacy.

Under Dean's Law, the S-curve of mass-market acceptance suddenly has a break in it, somewhere near the middle, and instead of sweeping on ahead it slows. That's because the market isn't that wide an ocean. It is more like a swimming pool. You can start a set of waves, but those waves cascade against the far wall, they come back and cancel out momentum.

In Iowa, Howard Dean saw just what Pat Robertson and Steve Forbes had seen before him. In order to "get over the hump," you have to scale down in the foreground, actually seem smaller, while building your real infrastructure below the Web.

How does this apply to broadband? Click and find out.

Broadband has hit this point. Most of the people who are interested in upgrading to broadband have already done so. The percentage of those with modems who want broadband is going down, according to Parks Associates.

That's about right. The percentage of us who wish to talk with their fingers or listen with their eyes (as I am doing now) is limited. Just as the number of people naturally drawn to any political message, no matter how well given, is limited.

How do we push through this? In politics, you go back to intimacy, you expand your range of issues, you trust people and let them come to you. A lot of people, like the new cat we got over the weekend, are naturally shy around any political hoop-de-doo, and are inclined to hide under the bed, hoping it will pass them by. You've got to coax them out, gently, keep the dogs away, pet them when they do come out, give them their space and their time. It's a seduction.

In marketing, you accomplish this seductoin with new applications. Not everyone likes this blog, or any blog. Not everyone likes the Web. Not everyone likes information. We're bombarded with the stuff.

We need, as I've said, new applications. Are you sick? Does your health need close monitoring? How about the condition of your air? How about your garden? There must be something you wish could be automated, could be checked on, so you wouldn't have to. What is it?

We can do it now. In the World of Always-On, we can collect any data, we can evaluate it, and we can alert whoever needs alerting, when they need alerting. Or we can hold that data, or that analysis, until you call for it. Yes, call for it, with your voice, no need for a keyboard.

The World of Always-On offers a host of application spaces that use Internet broadband merely as a backhaul medium. Many Always-On applications don't even need broadband speed -- they can live on your local network, in your own PC. These applications can live in your chest, on your things, on your fridge -- it's all up to you.

This is how broadband becomes ubiquitous, with greater intimacy.

The IN in the word Internet -- it stands for intimacy. And that's what Always-On applications are all about.