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On Nonscalability: The Living World Is Not Amenable to Precision-Nested Scales
The document explores how scalability, the ability to expand without changing the framework, has shaped modern projects, economies, and knowledge, leading to a loss of transformative diversity.
“The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band."
-Brian Eno.
Optimize for legacy, not empire. Empires die because they’re alone, legacies live because they involve others.
-OH, on building teams and brand communities
Ad legend Bill Bernbach letter on creativity, written in 1947:
Dear ________:
Our agency is getting big. That’s something to be happy about. But it’s something to worry about, too, and I don’t mind telling you I’m damned worried. I’m worried that we’re going to fall into the trap of bigness, that we ’re going to worship techniques instead of substance
... See more- Anti-network effects sometimes incorporate network effects of their own, but are generally more deliberate, intelligent, and actively governed. They are designed with scarcity in mind and are not so easy to starve out. They have long horizons and think many steps ahead in time, and can be spatially intelligent across entire topologies.
27/ They need... See morefrom Anti-Network Effects
- Scale is quite valuable, but the costs are usually hidden. Consolidation leads to monoculture, it reduces the stock of unique ferments. Culture, taste, and invention are often bottom-up phenomena. They require the opposite of scale. They require distance, and working alone.
- By contrast, consumer software tools that enhance human agency, that serve us when we are most creative and intentional, are often built by hobbyists and used by a handful of nerds. If such a tool ever gets too successful one of the Marl-serving companies, flush with cash from advertising or growth-hungry venture capital, will acquire it and kill i... See more
from The Tyranny of the Marginal User by Ivan Vendrov
note to self: do not let this happen
- This begs the question: What might it mean to reimagine the form of these datasets in a world unconstrained by pressures like speed, scale, and universality? By looking to artists like Anna Ridler andothers for their rejection of “off-the-shelf” datasets, we can imagine what it would be like to curate datasets with much deeper intention and context... See more
from Datasets as Imagination by Lila Shroff
the magic of small data
how many people you touched > how many people you reached
“How many things which are good when small get better by becoming bigger? That local restaurant you love can’t scale to millions of users. Do you really want your favourite indie band to aspire to stadium-level fame? People get cheaper books, and an independent bookseller closes its doors to make way for a giant warehouse full of underpaid people w
... See more