[P2P-F] Central Infrastructures and High Overhead vs. Distributed Infrastructures and Ephemeralization

Wed Oct 26 23:06:15 CEST 2011

The following brain dump came to me as I was driving, and I'm keying
it in here at the brew pub.  I cc'ed this to Andy and Francesca, since
it's sort of in their bailiwick.  What I'd like help with is reducing
this to a more succinct and coherent principle with fewer moving
parts.  And I'm especially interested in how it applies to distributed
activist movements like OWS.

Paul Hawken and the Lovinses stated a general principle that when
load-bearing infrastructures are built to handle the load at peak
demand, about 80% of the unit cost comes from the added infrastructure
that comes from the 20% increased usage that comes from the tiny
fraction of the time when the infrastructure experiences peak load.
They gave the  specific example of home heating, where enormous
savings could be achieved by scaling capacity to handle only modal
usage, with additional demand handled through spot heating.

More generally, centralized infrastructures must be scaled to handle
peak loads even when such loads only occur a small fraction of the
time.  And then they must amortize the extra cost, by breaking user
behavior to the needs of the infrastructure.

At the opposite pole is distributed infrastructure, in which most of
the infrastructural  goods are distributed among the endpoints,
relations are directly between endpoints without passing through a
central hub, and volume is driven entirely by user demand at the
endpoints.  Since the capital goods possessed by the endpoints is a
miniscule fraction of the cost of a centralized infrastructure, there
is no  incentive to subordinate end-users to the needs of the
infrastructure.

The classic example is Bucky Fuller's own:  the replacement of the
untold millions of tons of metal in transoceanic cables with a few
dozen one-ton satellites.  The entire infrastructure consists of
satellite dishes at the endpoints commuinicating -- via free,
immaterial ether! -- to the satellites.

Likewise projected systems which replace the fiber optic backbone with
satellite connections and last-mile meshworks.

Also the enormous infrastructure tied up in the civil aviation
system's central hubs and batch-and-queue processing, as opposed to
small jets flying directly between endpoints.

Another example is mass-production industry, which minimizes unit
costs by running its enormously costly capital-intensive machinery at
full capacity 24/7, and then requires organizing a society to
guarantee consumption of the full output whether consumers want the
shit or not -- what's called "supply-push distribution."  If consumers
won't take it all, you soak up surplus output by destroying it through
a permanent war economy, sinking it into an Interstate Highway System,
etc. -- or maybe just making stuff to fall apart.

The opposite of mass-production is distributed production on the
Emilia-Romagna model, with the capital infrastructure distributed to
the point of consumption and output geared to local demand.  The
transnational corporate model of outsourcing is an attempt to put this
new wine in old bottles.  It distributes the production facilities,
but does so on the basis of local labor cost rather than the location
of market demand.  So it still relies on the centralized
wholesale/retail infrastructure of warehouses on
wheels/containerships, scaled to peak load, to transfer goods from the
distributed production sites to the point of final consumption.  The
pure and adulterated distributed manufacturing model, OTOH, does away
with this infrastructure by siting production at the last-mile network
of consumption.

My last example, the one I suspect is more functionally related to
distributed activism models, is the distributed model of stigmergic
organization in Wikipedia or in open-source design as described by
Eric Raymond.  Individual contributions are coordinated entirely by
endpoint users, coordinating their efforts with the finished body of
work, without the intermediary of a centralized institutional
framework as in old-line activist organizations.

BTW, what's a good word for the opposite of "ephemeralization"?  Maybe
something that riffs off of gnostic concepts like sarx/sarcos?  If so,
does this mean that Alfred Sloan was the Demiurge?

-- 
Kevin Carson
Research Associate, Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Desktop Regulatory State:  The Countervailing Power of Super-Empowered
Individuals http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html