On Nonscalability | Will O'Pedia

tags: Scale

Notes

One arena where precision has gained a malevolent hegemony is the use of scale.

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scalability, that is, the ability to expand — and expand, and expand — without rethinking basic elements.

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blocking our ability to notice the heterogeneity of the world

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recalls attention to the wild diversity of life on earth through the argument that it is time for a theory of nonscalability

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nonscalability theory that pays attention to the mounting pile of ruins that scalability leaves behind.

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scholars lag behind, holding on to the aesthetic pleasures of scalable precision even when it projects only our fantasies.

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one historically significant link between conceptualizing and making the world: the naturalization of expansion as the way for humans to inhabit the earth.

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Ordinarily, things that expand change as they take on new materials and relationships.

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The expansion that counted as progress did not allow changes in the nature of the expanding project. The whole point was to extend the project without transforming it at all.

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Scalability is possible only if project elements do not form transformative relationships

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the pleasures of the pixelated zoom: we move from tiny details to wide views with a few clicks.

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Javanese traders based their businesses on relationships with buyers and other traders. Every time they expanded their networks, the business changed. Without scalable firms for expansion, Geertz argued, there could be no devel- opment. Javanese markets were hopelessly caught beyond the reach of progress.

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nonscalability is by no means better than scalability just by being nonscalable.

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The difference between scalable and nonscalable designs cannot be placed a priori on a normative scale.

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allows scales to arise from the relationships that inform particular projects, scenes, or events.

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Because relationships are encounters across difference, they have a quality of indeterminacy. Relationships are transformative, and one is not sure of the outcome

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One important model of scalability design was the plantation

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Scalability is never complete. If the world is still diverse and dynamic, it is because scalability never fulfills its own promises.

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Replacing relations of care between farmers and crops, plantation designs led to alienation between workers and cane; cane was the enemy. At least in theory, such labor avoided transformative relationships and thus could not disturb system design.

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Sugarcane plantations expanded and spread across the warm regions of the world. Their contingent components — cloned planting stock, unfree labor, and conquered, thus open, land to put them on — showed how making nonsoels could lead to unprecedented profits. This formula shaped a dream we have come to call modernity.

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Thus projects of training and regulation were spread around the world in the twentieth-century enthusiasm for global development. The new nations of the global south all wanted to remake their citizens and resources for scalability proj- ects. Expansion was advancement

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Widespread public realization of its horrors has not slowed it down. Perhaps, however, public notice has contributed to awareness of a different issue: scalability is always incomplete.

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At best, scal- able projects are articulations between scalable and nonscalable elements, in which nonscalable effects can be hidden from project investors.

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Matsutake, in contrast, cannot live without transformative relations with other species; they refuse to become nonsoels.

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impossible for humans to cultivate matsutake.

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The landscape was covered with thickets of lodgepole and fir: too small for most timber users, not scenic enough for recreation. But something else had emerged in the regional economy: matsutake mushrooms.

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these exist in prodigious numbers in the east- ern Cascades only because of fire exclusion, the starting point of industrial for- estry.

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by the time the mushrooms are in the belly of the plane, they have taken the form of scal- able inventory: a capitalist commodity sorted by its maturity, size, and weight.28 Expansion is suddenly easy for these packaged mushrooms; dissociated from the forest and the foragers, they are workable nonsoels.

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One might see the weeds as taking advantage of the hard work of making the plantation, from eradicating the origi- nal flora to providing water and fertilizers. Weeds here are “pirates” of scalability

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they dictated standards but allowed producers to obtain the products through any crazy means producers wanted. Thus, for example, to obtain cheap timber, the trading companies made deals with corrupt officials and vicious generals in Southeast Asia, who, in turn, bulldozed the forest territories of villagers. The traders were not responsible, and the wood was cheap.

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In Southeast Asian forests, for instance, timber was obtained by merely cutting without replenishing: this is not scalability. But the same timber became scalable when it entered the inventory of Japanese traders.

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Inventory making, a project of scalability, reaped the benefits of a nonscalable process of forest destruction and indigenous displacement. Piracy of this sort makes supply-chain capitalism work.

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The goals were, however, similar: to outsource costs and responsibility in order to reap inventory and profits. The key, again, is to allow producers to use any methods they want.

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just because something is nonscalable does not mean it is good.

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Independent contracting is supply-chain capitalism’s signature form of labor; independent contractors recruit and discipline themselves with no cost or responsibilities for lead firms. And why do all the work of starting a plantation if you can take raw materials for free from public or common sources?

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Most modern science demands scalability, the ability to make one’s research framework apply to greater scales without budging the frame. This kind of expan- sion is only possible when the research framework parses stable data elements— the nonsoels of science.

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This kind of knowledge cannot see nonscalability, because of the constitutive scalability of its own practices.

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Classic twentieth-century population genetics blocked attention to diversity-making processes, because it was a science of expansion.

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Notes

One arena where precision has gained a malevolent hegemony is the use of scale.

scalability, that is, the ability to expand — and expand, and expand — without rethinking basic elements.

blocking our ability to notice the heterogeneity of the world

recalls attention to the wild diversity of life on earth through the argument that it is time for a theory of nonscalability

nonscalability theory that pays attention to the mounting pile of ruins that scalability leaves behind.

scholars lag behind, holding on to the aesthetic pleasures of scalable precision even when it projects only our fantasies.

one historically significant link between conceptualizing and making the world: the naturalization of expansion as the way for humans to inhabit the earth.

Ordinarily, things that expand change as they take on new materials and relationships.

The expansion that counted as progress did not allow changes in the nature of the expanding project. The whole point was to extend the project without transforming it at all.

Scalability is possible only if project elements do not form transformative relationships

the pleasures of the pixelated zoom: we move from tiny details to wide views with a few clicks.

Elements of the social landscape removed from formative social relations might be termed “nonsocial landscape elements” or, using the pixel formula, “nonso” plus “el” or nonsoels.

nonscalability is by no means better than scalability just by being nonscalable.

The difference between scalable and nonscalable designs cannot be placed a priori on a normative scale.

allows scales to arise from the relationships that inform particular projects, scenes, or events.

Because relationships are encounters across difference, they have a quality of indeterminacy. Relationships are transformative, and one is not sure of the outcome

One important model of scalability design was the plantation

Scalability is never complete. If the world is still diverse and dynamic, it is because scalability never fulfills its own promises.

As cane workers in the New World, enslaved Africans had great advantages from the growers’ perspective: slaves had no local social relations and thus no easy place to run.

Replacing relations of care between farmers and crops, plantation designs led to alienation between workers and cane; cane was the enemy. At least in theory, such labor avoided transformative relationships and thus could not disturb system design.

Modernity is, among other things, the triumph of technical prowess over nature. This triumph requires that nature be cleansed of transformative social relations; otherwise it cannot be the raw material of techne.

Thus projects of training and regulation were spread around the world in the twentieth-­century enthusiasm for global development. The new nations of the global south all wanted to remake their citizens and resources for scalability proj- ects. Expansion was advancement

Widespread public realization of its horrors has not slowed it down. Perhaps, however, public notice has contributed to awareness of a different issue: scalability is always incomplete.

At best, scal- able projects are articulations between scalable and nonscalable elements, in which nonscalable effects can be hidden from project investors.

Matsutake, in contrast, cannot live without transformative relations with other species; they refuse to become nonsoels.

impossible for humans to cultivate matsutake.

The landscape was covered with thickets of lodgepole and fir: too small for most timber users, not scenic enough for recreation. But something else had emerged in the regional economy: matsutake mushrooms.

these exist in prodigious numbers in the east- ern Cascades only because of fire exclusion, the starting point of industrial for- estry.

One might see the weeds as taking advantage of the hard work of making the plantation, from eradicating the origi- nal flora to providing water and fertilizers. Weeds here are “pirates” of scalability

In Southeast Asian forests, for instance, timber was obtained by merely cutting without replenishing: this is not scalability. But the same timber became scalable when it entered the inventory of Japanese traders.

Inventory making, a project of scalability, reaped the benefits of a nonscalable process of forest destruction and indigenous displacement. Piracy of this sort makes supply-­chain capitalism work.

The goals were, however, similar: to outsource costs and responsibility in order to reap inventory and profits. The key, again, is to allow producers to use any methods they want.

just because something is nonscalable does not mean it is good.

Most modern science demands scalability, the ability to make one’s research framework apply to greater scales without budging the frame. This kind of expan- sion is only possible when the research framework parses stable data elements— the nonsoels of science.

This kind of knowledge cannot see nonscalability, because of the constitutive scalability of its own practices.

Classic twentieth-century population genetics blocked attention to diversity-making processes, because it was a science of expansion.

Notes that link to this note

Thus projects of training and regulation were spread around the world in the twentieth-century enthusiasm for global development. The new nations of the global south all wanted to remake their citizens and resources for scalability proj- ects. Expansion was advancement

Inventory making, a project of scalability, reaped the benefits of a nonscalable process of forest destruction and indigenous displacement. Piracy of this sort makes supply-chain capitalism work.