Tiny Villages: Horizontally Scaling Society
Cloud computing is about horizontally (as opposed to vertically) scaling systems. Instead of building one super-powerful server, you create many inexpensive servers that each contain a small part of the system. There are multiple advantages to “scaling out” rather than “scaling up”, such as incrementally improved capacity with little or no downtime and less expensive, more maintainable servers.
Moving our human development and zoning towards a similar horizontal scaling architecture will make achieving our sustainability goals much more practical. Instead of oversize homes in expansive suburbs, far from vast agricultural spaces, and a long commute away from large office and industrial areas, lets create smaller self-contained and more tractable units for everything. This will mean smaller homes bundled next door to smaller agricultural and commercial/industrial buildings.
Phi Beta Iota: Decentralization is central to our migration from the top-down industrial era paradigm that is 50% waste, to the bottom-up ecologies of mutual sustainment characteristic of a well-design village in harmony with nature.
See Also:
Marcin Jakubowski: Open Food — Hacking the Farm
Mongoose: Water Scarcity for Half the World
Robert Steele: The Ultimate Hack — From Open Data to Open Engineering to Open Power
