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Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

Some loosely organized thoughts on the current Zeitgeist. They were inspired by the response to my recent meta-project mentioned in my previous post https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/115254145226514817, where within 24 hours I became aware of a large number of ongoing small-scale collaborative math projects with their own modest but active community (now listed at https://mathoverflow.net/questions/500720/list-of-crowdsourced-math-projects-actively-seeking-participants ); but they are from the perspective of a human rather than a mathematician. As a crude first approximation, one can think of human society as the interaction between entities at four different scales: 1. Individual humans 2. Small organized groups of humans (e.g., close or extended family; friends; local social or religious organizations; informal sports clubs; small businesses and non-profits; ad hoc collaborations on small projects; small online communities) 3. Large organized groups of humans (e.g., large companies; governments; global institutions; professional sports clubs; large political parties or movements; large social media sites) 4. Large complex systems (e.g., the global economy; the environment; the geopolitical climate; popular culture and "viral" topics; the collective state of science and technology). (1/5)

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