Internet Sellout

Demand Unearned Rewards

Imperialism Scales

But will it scale? That is the question that has driven the last 10 years of internet development ever since Google had seemingly connected scale with virtue. Developers, Tech Evangelists and Venture Capitalists repeated this question like a Panhandle Evangelical asking, "Are you saved?". As the utopian Silicon Valley continues to roll out dystopia maybe people are ready to consider that the mandate of scale is not always and possibly quite rarely, a good thing. Imperialism scales. Most of the people that pushed the scale mandate ironically had been influenced by a book The Cathedral and the Bazaar. It is kind of amazing to me that the metaphor was never used to deflate the mandate to scale. Developers have been suckered into this premise that may make secure solutions more difficult to architect. It also locks developers into chasing complex cloud infrastructure. Meanwhile the developers in Silicon Valley live in co-located high-rises next to freeways. The Tech overlords however live up windy roads in the hills. Scale is for suckers.

*pic is my AboveNet rack right before they told me after 10 years that I was too small a customer and had to leave.

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