This talk will argue that marginal utility can be extended from the domain of Micro- economics to explain some of the problems that frustrate interaction with distributed systems. In particular, concave utility curves will be used to analyse the electronic gridlock that occurs when remote systems cannot satisfy the number of demands which users make upon their services. Convex utility curves represent the information saturation that occurs when users cannot extract important documents from a mass of irrelevant information. I will build on this analysis to argue that marginal utility can also be used to identify a range of interface techniques that reduce the problems associated with electronic gridlock and information saturation.