horizontal vs vertical

Here's my stab at it:

Horizontal scaling always overrides vertical unless the horizontal is willing to destroy itself. The network survives an atomic bomb, so (and I will repeat this until someone recognizes its truth or at least its wit:) In the rock paper scissors
model, where paper can beat a rock, the web beats atom bomb.

So, vertical loses to horizontal. This can be good (the horizontal is not always clear) but in terms of what this does to our cultivation of will, and that sort of libertarian diy kind of internal locus of control, we might find we prefer an atom
bomb falling from the sky. At least with the A-Bomb, the devastation is recognizeable, physical, and limited in its boundaries. A horizontal world can destroy us slower and without boundaries and dress itself up as democratic revolution (when it is
just as likely to be the triumph of pigs!) but at least with horizontal, at any point we can wake up and unplug. I mean, the lack of physical death is always better than the presence of physical death. The horizontal has always been willing to
destroy to keep up.

But I change my mind about this every day. The reality is that horizontal living is gonna hit us on a level way bigger than grassroots democracy and social networking. It is likely to change the entire way we see our self and culture: created by
vote by a community with ideas deemed bad because they were minus-pointed by more people in the user interface.

"We've decided collectively to drop the a-bomb!"

It's why I think a collaborative grant for community project building is both a great idea and a terrible one.

-er.


Eric Dymond <[email protected]> on Thursday, May 18, 2006 at 11:46 PM -0500 wrote:
>I lied,
>My last entry is:
>does vertical scaling(Mark Tribe, steve Deitz, G.H.) always override horizontal scaling (myself, Brad Brace, Valery Grancher)?
>Eric
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