MiddleSpace

ThoughtStorms Wiki

RossMayfield on where BottomUp meets TopDown. Ways bottom-up community efforts are being co-opted or working in partnerships with the official top-down institutional hierarchies.

http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/10/27/middlespace.php

Examples :

I just thought of a great example of MiddleSpace. The web. The web isn't (yet) entirely bottom up. We don't all serve our sites from our desktop computers. We hire space on more centralized, better connected servers. OTOH it's not entirely centralized or owned by any single authority or server. Even the DNS is distributed.

(Although local hubs like FaceBook have made a good attempt at creating huge centres)

BlockChains are moving to Middle-space as they get sharded into lattices. (Eg. BitLattice And then trusted local centres are used to sync the bits together. It's a solution to the twin problems :no single centre / but complete PeerToPeer is intractable ... too slow, too much traffic.
Here on ThoughtStorms, LocalIndexes (eg. OnCities) are neither part of overall TopDown classification hierarchies, but are adding some hierarchical structure.
KevinKelly on the necessity of some TopDown : http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/02/thebottomis_n.php
Fake-friends as advertising on YASNs. Management co-opted the idea and sold the friends to advertisers.
AOLJournal running blogging competitions where members vote for winners
Wikipedia going into publishing real books.
Institutions distributing decision-making through communications technology
FeudalEuropeAsMiddleSpace

JohnRobb finds an example from DesktopManufacturing :

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/johnrobb/2006/11/personal_fabric.html

Some (WarpLink) compares and contrasts :

TheMiddleClass
WhatLowAndHighRoadMayHaveInCommon
HappyMedium
TheProgramLibraryBoundary
ConservationOfModularity
RichardDawkins on MiddleWorld : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4676751.stm
- makes you think of MiddleEarth

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.97.1.32