Economies of scale, which are huge in computing, lend an almost irresistible force to centralization. The only countervailing force is communication costs. The

Economies of scale, which are huge in computing, lend an almost irresistible force to centralization. The only countervailing force is communication costs. The most successful decentralization effort in computing, the replacement of mainframes with personal computers, occurred because networking infrastructure was immature and lagged behind advances in miniaturization. The notion that the internet would decentralize information is completely wrong. The internet restored the client-server relationship from the mainframe era, with the real power being with the databases. The internet recentralized computing after the PC era.