https://www.growbyginkgo.com/2023/05/01/against-scale/
by Claire L. Evans

““Scalability is not an ordinary feature of nature,” writes the anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing in The Mushroom at the End of the World.”

“As Tsing observes in her work, nothing living expands without changing in some way.”

“What the business world calls “scalability,” however, is precisely the capacity to expand without change, like a fractal — or a fast food franchise. A scalable business can be easily reproduced…”

growth, in its full honesty, should insinuate inevitable death

“Technology has habituated us to an unnatural experience of scale. We pinch and zoom, enlarging and diminishing everything we touch, seduced by a sense of godlike omniscience over the world’s vastness.”

“It’s tempting to zoom from Google Earth’s planetary view down to the bare pixel and believe what the journey tells us: that the real world fits in our pockets, and on our terms.

As we zoom, we never change size: we are always giants, looking upon our dwindling territory.“

“Considering scale as an e_thical ground_, as Horton suggests, requires awareness of these nested and simultaneous realities — and most importantly, of their reliance on one another. When we act upon the seed, we act upon the meadow, and we act upon the world. Let’s sow carefully, and follow the sun.”