"We're all apart, even when we're together. This is the joy - and the sorrow - of decentralization. What's the optimal size of a server?" The facts indicate t

"We're all apart, even when we're together. This is the joy - and the sorrow - of decentralization. What's the optimal size of a server?" The facts indicate that we just don't know and it's likely that we will not know for quite some time until we've a much better handle on and understanding of the long-term statistics about how connectivity and centralization impinges upon human behavior and how humans socially adapt—or do not do so. That's to say we need to know both the positive and negative impacts on society of the internet with reasonable accuracy before we can make any authoritative assessment and I reckon we are nowhere near that point yet. Let's look back a little. Until the 1970s the connections between people were reasonably stable and established, radio TV and newspapers were usually conservative and reasonably accurate in reporting - sensationalism in reporting wasn't yet commonplace. Then in the 1970s we had the arrival of radio shock-jocks, and beat-ups and sensationalism in television news and newspaper reporting became commonplace. This in-your-face type of media presentation altered the way the population thought and behaved, and the fact is we still haven't fully analyzed or accurately know the effects that those changes brought to society over the past 50 years. The internet and social media have brought about social and political changes to the way people think and act and similarly to the collective social fabric and those effects have been much faster and dramatically greater than those that occurred in the immediate pre-internet era. This is a huge subject and we've only just recognized how important this issue is. Next stage is to gather even more data and it'll be years before we have any definitive answers.