-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 1:26 PM -0800 4/2/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
Physics, because large entities have different properties (eg surface-to-mass ratio; inertia) than small entities.
Well, certainly, that's the current wisdom about such things. However, I'm talking about markets, and firms, which are all creatures of information flow. As William Gibson put it once, a corporation is a being which eats information and shits money. In those terms, then, since, Coase's theorem again, reduced transaction cost (lowered by lower information gathering, and most important to cypherpunks, lower transaction *security* costs lowering transaction execution/settlement/clearing) how do we get the large behavior current in modern markets without large firms? Easy. Swarms, if you will, ala Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control." Lots of little devices acting in common, in their own self interest, using markets to price their services. Remember the scene in Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" about defense in depth, where you enter a perimeter and little diamond-skinned dirigibles clot around you and slow you down, and the more force you present, the more derigibles there are, including the ones with lethal capabilities? Or the bit about "warfare" being conducted at the nano-level and whatshername's brother dying from allergies, for the lack of a better term, from all the airborne ditritus? (They just figured out that buckyballs might be a pathogen if inhaled this week, if you remember...) Somewhere, on the Shipwright site, is a John Young - discovered DOD paper from the mid-90's about "The Mesh and The Net", which looks like a toe-hold on the idea of geodesic warfare. I used to joke about keeping the landmines in your front yard paid or they wouldn't let you out the door. :-). So, I would bet that lower costs of market entry means that smaller firms could compete in large, temporary groups, in the same way that market sell-off stampedes happen, only with guns. The net allows more collaboration between the troops without central control, in the same way that more information allows capital markets to price transactions without central control. Leadership is temporary, and non-monopolistic, non-dynastic. Anyway, that's all I can think about at the moment. Off to breakfast at Auntie B's. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQG7DoMPxH8jf3ohaEQIIvgCfQXi/yj7Cf8hqAF3kD3fkvAwsWOYAoMBP RO9NgIZM1tQUARqrMlHrX1/d =iiXa -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'