Ah, once again, I must disagree with Mr. Raymond. I believe that he critically misunderstands the nature of industry.
Mass Manufacturing is what encourages centralization. That is, an economy of scale. Thus, we have mass produced pipes, tools, and software. Microsoft is a perfect example of this. Likewise, big name titles such as Quicken and Adobe Acrobat are also examples of this. These do not seem to be decentralizing.
However, the factory system only works as well as an item is assemblable in a factory. Houses are the perfect example of this. Although many houses are built on the same floorplan, most are hand-assembled by many individual crafters or teams of crafters. The same is true of company web-sites and custom applications. No economy of scale is applicable here, so decentralization rules.
So if anything, in my humbl opinion, the current IT economy resembles the industrialized economy MORE, not less.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
dacuteturtle.livejournal.com at 06:09am on 2003-07-31
Mass Manufacturing is what encourages centralization. That is, an economy of scale. Thus, we have mass produced pipes, tools, and software. Microsoft is a perfect example of this. Likewise, big name titles such as Quicken and Adobe Acrobat are also examples of this. These do not seem to be decentralizing.
However, the factory system only works as well as an item is assemblable in a factory. Houses are the perfect example of this. Although many houses are built on the same floorplan, most are hand-assembled by many individual crafters or teams of crafters. The same is true of company web-sites and custom applications. No economy of scale is applicable here, so decentralization rules.
So if anything, in my humbl opinion, the current IT economy resembles the industrialized economy MORE, not less.