What if we build the internet we always wanted? (oreilly.com)

I always found Mike Loukides to be insightful but this makes me wonder if he truly does not understand the dynamics underyling a networked economy. Google and Facebook are big not because the Internet wasn‘t built to prevent them but because friction went away at crucial points that made scale effects possible not seen before. No matter what protocol and infrastructure you put at the base of the network, at one point there will always arise some large aggregators one or two or more levels up.

Still, I wonder why not more efforts are put into building different network backbones and entry points besides the current ISP model. There are already local, successful examples of this, born out of necessity. (in Greece for example)