The natural size

As anything scales too effectively – from restaurants and ad agencies to social networks and search engines – the market opens for more non-scalable alternatives. Once Starbucks opens on every block, we crave the artisanal coffee shop. There's the identity piece of it, where we want some degree of distinctiveness. But there's a practical side too: ... See more

Small, close, tight-knit connections are fundamental to intimacy,, and we can’t scale small groups in the sense of stretching them out to fit more people inside. To stretch out a small group and add more people to it senselessly is like trying to grow a cell by just stretching it out. The once small, intimate community will lose all the things that... See more