Hierarchy in Decentralized Networks
Discussion
David de Ugarte:
“Hierarchies necessarily appear in every decentralised structure. The higher we are in the information pyramid, the less we will depend on others to receive information and the more possibilities of transmitting it we will have. The version of an event given by a world press agency will reach every last corner of the planet, whereas that given by the local press – even if it's located in the same place where the event is happening – will hardly cross its closest borders, even if the version given by the local press is completely different, and superior to, that given by the global agency. The statements made by the general secretary of a political party will reach all party members through internal networks, but those made by a village politician will only reach as far as the village boundaries. The capacity to transmit is the capacity to bring people together, to summon up the collective will, to act. The capacity to transmit is a precondition for political action.
And in every decentralised
structure, such a capacity
really is exclusive to very few nodes.
In distributed networks, by definition, nobody depends
exclusively on anyone else in order to send his message to
a third party. There are no unique filters. In both kinds of
network “everything is connected to everything,” but in
distributed networks the difference lies in the fact that any
transmitter doesn't have to always go necessarily through
the same nodes in order to reach others. A local newspaper
doesn't have to sell its version of an event to an agency
journalist who has just come to the area, and a local
politician in a village doesn't need to convince all his
regional and provincial colleagues in order to reach his
fellow party members in other parts of the country.”
(http://deugarte.com/gomi/the-power-of-networks.pdf)