RE: Dot.com bubbles and the biggest of the too big to fails
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When I was teaching, I used the Britannica Enciclopedia - Encarta - Wikipedia case.
Those old enough will remember how Microsoft wanted to enter the Enciclopedia market and tried to negotiate with the biggest player. Britannica answered with a prepotent NO as they were the best Encyclopedia of the world (centralized) and Microsoft, although a good tech company, knew nothing about the encyclopedia business. Gates bought a small unknow company and created its product. Britannica became bankrupt a few years after. The technology was great but Microsoft still was a centralized company and tasted the same medicine when Wikipedia took the place of all packaged encyclopedia products as they could not compete with the decentralized model Wikipedia introduced. Encarta ended as a product quite fast.
Nothing can compete with decentralization if it is well conducted and with blockchain and monetary value, decentralization is even stronger.
The strength of nature is its decentralization, even our genetics is decentralized to some degree to protect us and allow us to cope in a a wide array of conditions.
Side note: We had a set of World Book Encyclopedias from the 60s when I was a kid. Can you imagine reading a printed encyclopedia for knowledge now?
I sometimes remember copying the content of the encyclopedia to do my homework from school. It is amazing how things have changed. I also remember how my kid who will start college in a few weeks, was at third or fourth grade a few years ago, we bought him a dictionary he had in his room. One day, helping him with his homework I asked him to look for a word in the dictionary, and he took the iPad and checked the dictionary there. I was shocked as I had never thought of looking for a word on the computer just because I had never looked for words anymore since I was a kid. I then realized how everything has changed.
The encyclopedia was "the source of truth" when I was a kid.
I like the online disctionaries - even better is the thesaurus and better again, etymologyonline.com :)