scale is the enemy by Alan Jacobs
But that’s a feature, not a bug. Scale — as-big-as-possible, universal-not-local, something-for-everyone scale — is the enemy.
I am coming around to this way of thinking in many aspects of life … and even technology.
2 replies on “scale is the enemy”
I’m with you on this but it flies in the face of what every MBA and business-school-educated professional has been taught for 40 years. You and I probably put a high value on the human and community aspects but there aren’t hard dollar figures on that.
It’s always a red flag to me when I see the words “scale” or “value” because it means there’s a formula being used that has specific currency numbers in it. The human cost never really gets a hard currency number so it’s often discarded as insignificant.
I don’t know where the line sits, but the work around “scale” needs to be in support and deferential to something. For me, that something is the human work that continues to need to be done. I am completely inline with what you are thinking, those words scare me most of the time because of the sheer number of assumptions needing to be made for those to be beneficial in some form and so often those assumptions are faulty.
The humans are required for technology to have value. We are not merely input into some vast machine because then we are serving the technology.