> I am having a hard time thinking of a mode of power that isn’t far more centralized today than it was just 2, 4, 6, 8, … years ago.
Electrical power. That used to be almost entirely centralised, but it's increasingly easy to be off-grid.
Manufacturing power. I don't know the full dynamics, but there's clearly a lot of cheap good tools easily available, so the term "cottage industry" still makes literal sense.
Comms. Twitter becoming X pushed a lot of decentralised alternatives with similar vibes.
That said, if you go back 20 years, you get the pre-Facebook world and the pre-Twitter world for comms, but you lose cheap good home 3D printing and a specific district in China was becoming the obvious heavily centralised place for all modern consumer electronics to get made.
Of course, go back to 1800 and you get something like, IDK, 70% of the world's internationally traded cutlery being made in Sheffield? I may be off by a lot there, that's just a rough guess given its dominance.
Electrical power. That used to be almost entirely centralised, but it's increasingly easy to be off-grid.
Manufacturing power. I don't know the full dynamics, but there's clearly a lot of cheap good tools easily available, so the term "cottage industry" still makes literal sense.
Comms. Twitter becoming X pushed a lot of decentralised alternatives with similar vibes.
That said, if you go back 20 years, you get the pre-Facebook world and the pre-Twitter world for comms, but you lose cheap good home 3D printing and a specific district in China was becoming the obvious heavily centralised place for all modern consumer electronics to get made.
Of course, go back to 1800 and you get something like, IDK, 70% of the world's internationally traded cutlery being made in Sheffield? I may be off by a lot there, that's just a rough guess given its dominance.