'Scaling' is a strange idea. It can be used to describe mom-and-pop
efforts to grow some product line or whatever, but it has a more
important usage that's much more ideological — as in VC efforts to
identify potential unicorns. In that sense, it's invoked as though its
meaning is self-evident and its force is inevitable, like a sort of
abstract manifest destiny — which, of course, is exactly what it is.
It doesn't have a Wikipedia entry, FWIW, just a disambiguation page that
points to a bunch of detailed uses. When you unpack it a bit, it amounts
to something a bit less sexy-sounding, like: 'deliberately designed to
maximally exploit arbitrary resources as quickly as possible without
regard for the consequences.' So, on a certain level, it's kissing
cousins with the idea of conspiracy, mostly distinguished from that by
its technocratic garb and avoidance of morality. I think that's worth
noting, because instead of casting scaling as an intrinsic quality of
some *thing*, the capacity to scale, it shifts our attention to the
environment in which that scaling is said to take place. So, basically,
it's the capacity to monopolize.
It's more complicated than that, of course. I've pieced together parts
of a history of the idea, and it's pretty interesting. If the idea
sounds heroic and inevitable, that's mostly compensation: it arose from
conflict and it aims to stave off chaos. It's a very Apollonian idea,
you could say. That's why it's so bad at beginnings ('deliberately
designed to') and ends ('without regard for the consequences').
Cheers,
Ted
On 30 Dec 2018, at 12:09, Morlock Elloi wrote:
The problem is that this doesn't scale. Or at least the scaling model
has not been discovered. At the same time, the opposition scales
pretty well.
For this scaling to involve machines (computers, programs, networks
and such, and I cannot imagine competitive scaling not involving
machines - anyone?) another problem has to be solved, as the current
crop of the available computing machinery is heavily biased towards
individualistic outcomes. The redesign would be a major effort, as it
definitely does not consist of another 'app'. It involves
interventions at the infrastructure level, and there are $ trillions
already invested in the current one, so it's hard.
How do you motivate open door crappers to lay own fiber, grow own
silicon and use only P2P protocols with source routing? It's hard to
even imagine this.
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