What is decentralization?

The Networking Age tends to introduce new less centralized modes of communication into our lives and businesses.

I'm going to start here with a look at the term decentralization and then work toward an illustration of how the Internet actually works to describe why it provides such interesting new ways of doing things.

Ok. Decentralization.  What is it?  And why should you care?  Well, when in doubt....go to the Web and what better place to start than by visiting Wikipedia (itself a very decentralized service).

Wikipedia tells me...

Decentralisation (or decentralization) is any of various means of more widely distributing decision-making to bring it closer to the point of service or action. It occurs in a great many contexts in engineering, management science, political science, political economy, sociology and economics - each of which could be said to study mass decision-making by groups too large to consult with each other very directly.

Interesting.  When we use terms like centralization and decentralization we're asking how a system involves people and arranges its parts in order to operate and to make decisions.   Centralization refers to the inherent bias in a systems' design toward a central location, a close group or set of individuals for example.  The extreme example of this would be a master and slave relationship between an awful dictator and all his or her subjects.  A dictator like this might set up a system to serve only his or her desires.  All decisions would have to be routed through the slave master.  Society would develop, then, in a way that reflected the master's own wishes.   Decentralization on the other hand describes an inherent bias toward equality for every member, every part of a system.  Paradoxically, an extreme example of a decentralized system is actually the absence of any system at all where all the parts are seemingly isolated and without any mutual coordination...sorta like completely isolated individuals.  But this isn't a system at all is it....just chaos.  So for our purposes let's think of a completely decentralized system as one where decision making is completely distributed, where every member is autonomous. 

This spectrum on the left lays out various ways a system, like an office, a club, an entertainment company, a bus network, a country, heck, just about anything, might work.

Kinda interesting isn't it.   You should be able to think of plenty of practical examples of systems that look like these drawings.   Centralization conjurs up notions of a command and control style authority, where hierarchy is strict and top-down, where power and resources are stored centrally:  A military unit, or a corporate monopoly, might look like a centralized network for example.  Decentralization conjurs up notions of freedom, equality, and empowerment for all members and coordination without formal hierarchical relationships.  Some would add too that the trade-off for what seems like desirable characteristics is a distinct lack of structure, no coordination, and even anarchy - a system where everything just breaks down.  The night sky, or a dust cloud, might look like the extremely decentralized end of the spectrum.  Just remember that it is a spectrum and in practice there are really many shades in between.

So, now that you have an idea what these terms centralization and decentralization refer to....how can the be applied to communication?  to Networking? to eBusiness?  Are there new opportunities?

And how does it affect production, distribution, control, knowledge, expression, and so on.....these are very important questions these days. 

To understand how the Internet actually fosters decentralization let's look at how the Internet works.