F >There's a piece by Kevin Kelly called "Network Economics" in the F >latestWhole Earth Review, about how better communications tech and F >changed business practices lower transaction costs and (along with F >competition and the pace of things these days) are pushing down the F >optimum size of businesses. F > F >-fnerd F >quote me Likewise "The Incredible Shrinking Company" from THE ECONOMIST of DECEMBER 15, 1990. "Computers were supposed to centralise decision-making and produce ever, bigger firms. They seem to have done just the opposite Peering into its crystal ball in 1958, the Harvard Business Review said that computers would revolutionise American business. By the end of the 1980s they would ensure that American business would be concentrated as never before. The economy would be dominated by a few giant firms. Within each firm important decisions would be made by a handful of executives with access to the firm's single, big computer. The exact opposite has occurred. In America the average number of employees per firm has been falling since the late 1960s; but more and more of those employees have a computer on their desk." DCF --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165