@dlakelan In hindsight, we did fall for the assumption that large centralized architectures built by benevolent dictators would work because we seemed to believe that technical competency and benevolence were hand in hand, and not a particular artifact of a particular, I'm not sure yet... Generation? Generation and geography? Dirty hippie technophiles in Silicon Valley? All of the above? None of the above? Wishful thinking?

Whatever it was, we failed to learn the lesson that history teaches about ceding territory to kings.