Thanks for this very interesting comment. However, I consider it as a complement rather than as a refutation of the thesis.

The key argument I’m advancing is that peer governance and production, i.e. direct decision-making by participants, has existed before, but on the smaller scale of small locally-close communities. As soon as a certain scale set-in, hierarchy would be introduced. The argument of Dunbar is that the human mind has physical limitations dealing with relational complexity, and that therefore, as soon as the group reaches a certain level, there is a re-simplification process. Indeed hierarchy essentially means that decisions must be able to be taken by the ‘man at the top’, so that is a extraordinary reduction in complexity, but it is of course, also a bottleneck and impediment.

But what if we have a technology which allows the global coordination of small teams, i.e. in fact what the internet and web enable? This is the crux of the argument, and I don’t see how that is undermined by your thesis.

Two extra caveats: I’m not sure that only the Dunbar number applies, in my experience as SME entrepreneur and director at multinationals, I noticed a similar phenomena already occurring at around 25 people, but that is just a non-scientific hunch.

Furthermore, we should also see that the internet effect had been anticipated by the other communication tools, but it is just that it enabled a quantitative jump in the scale of the possibilities, by reducing dramatically both physical and immaterial (mental) transaction costs.

What you bring to the table is another effect of our digital technologies, and I agree that it is a very important factor about which I had not thought. Yes of course, the ability to store the collective knowledge is really crucial, and is what leaves a trace to build on.

So both the arguments are components of this broader and fundamental shift, they are different aspects of the internet revolution that enables the large-scale emergence of P2P.