Post AiaFMGDPKbCXE7vMAK by Elizabeth3@toot.community
(DIR) More posts by Elizabeth3@toot.community
(DIR) Post #AiaD82QBcVHMU1zYGm by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-04T11:51:48Z
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I've been thinking a lot about centralization and decentralization over the last few days (well, decades, but this particular train of thought has been running for a few days.) The thing about centralized platforms (for anything! social media, electricity generation, food distribution, government, business, etc.) is they can work really well. You get a lot of benefits from centralization, a lot of deduplication of effort. Sometimes, in the case of things like power grids, centralization is so much more efficient than decentralization that considering the latter starts to feel ridiculous. When built correctly, centralized platforms work very well. But, they fail horribly. Really horribly, and on a scale and in ways that are only possible for centralized platforms.
(DIR) Post #AiaDpBvY9YnyPwEs2S by DecaturNature@theatl.social
2024-06-04T11:59:34Z
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@ajroach42 Centralized systems also concentrate power, therefore they need a lot of oversight, which makes them less efficient (though people often discount this oversight burden as 'external' to the supposedly efficient system)
(DIR) Post #AiaEMOEVQCnO8gw4J6 by freakazoid@retro.social
2024-06-04T12:05:34Z
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@ajroach42 Low-probability, high-impact events seem to be the killer. A Carrington Event could take out the US power grid for *months*. Possibly longer given how much havoc it would wreak in the rest of the world, making it difficult to make replacement parts.And then there are the failures resulting from the political centralization required to build centralized systems to begin with. All of Nigeria has gone dark because of a single strike. The workers are demanding a 15x increase in their wage, because that's how much their currency has depreciated.
(DIR) Post #AiaERBGZ3julN5BPFY by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-04T12:06:27Z
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Full decentralization, every man an island, does not work well for most things. On the other hand, it doesn't fail especially badly. When it works, it works for one person. When it fails, it fails for one person. Full centralization, when it fails, can fail for everyone. And it can fail because of the choices of one person. This can look like Texas' power grid failing during an ice storm, or CA running rolling blackouts because running their power grid at full steam would burn the state to the ground. Centralized systems concentrate power in the hands of a very small number of people. They concentrate maintenance responsibilities in the hands of a very small number of people. The more centralized the system, the more fragile it all is.
(DIR) Post #AiaF0yJofw0TdklptQ by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-04T12:12:57Z
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Anyway, there's a lesson in here for the future. Big things can work well and always break badly. Small, isolated things usually work poorly. Small, connected things can work well and usually fail non-catastrophically.
(DIR) Post #AiaFMGDPKbCXE7vMAK by Elizabeth3@toot.community
2024-06-04T12:16:45Z
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@ajroach42 great point. That’s also why our political system is decentralized, to protect the whole. We end up with some pretty terrible happenings in some parts which is terrible but for the people who live there. But it does make the system as a whole more robust, more resistant to tyranny. Which we need because we’re on the knife edge right now!
(DIR) Post #AiaaIakd8T5gnSYVay by PeterGray@mastodon.green
2024-06-04T16:11:23Z
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@ajroach42 how could we run, for example, a decentralised transport system across the UK?
(DIR) Post #AiabmY0hzQO0wEvLea by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-04T16:27:57Z
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@PeterGray street cars and trolleys are pretty effective and federate well, but I don't know UK geography well enough to comment beyond that.
(DIR) Post #AiafItyg9Qo0CK5t2G by Havant_Enviro@mastodon.sdf.org
2024-06-04T17:07:24Z
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@ajroach42 Regarding power grids.You need to understand the engineering and logistics.Centralisation made sense if you need to get fuel to a power station. We went from hundreds of small power stations and hence hundreds of small transport logistics problems creating a complex network, to a much reduced transport network.But renewables doesn't need a transport network to feed the solar panels and wind farms.Often it's just the practicality of doing something that is the guide.
(DIR) Post #Aiaun7m2v6lGzC3Qjg by lufthans@mastodon.social
2024-06-04T20:00:56Z
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@ajroach42 decentralization isn't every person for themselves and doesn't preclude small groups like a ton of what you're doingThe band needs to play together not as isolated individuals, it doesn't scale for every person to have their own makerspace or bookstoreYour bookstore benefits from bar codes like other bookstores, but you can locally adjust what info is available when pulling up the titleMicrofactories in local markets get efficiencies of scale, but can have decentralized control