Most organic network systems, like humans, and some inorangic network systems, like businesses, scale sub-linearly. Meaning the volume or size of various qualities associated with that system scale to a power of less than 1.
For example, a mouse is essentially a scaled down elephant. The heart rate of a mouse might be 100 bpm. If you scale it up 1000x to the size of an elephant, its heart rate is not 1000x slower. It doesn’t scale linearly. It scales sub-linearly. Meaning the elephants heart rate might be 700 bpm instead. Making these numbers up, but the point stands.
Cities on the other hand scale super-linearly. Toronto, despite being roughly 3x the population of Vancouver, for example, does not produce 3x the number of patents, or have 3x the crime. It has more than 3x, maybe 3.5x. Again making the numbers up for simplicity.
This super-linear scaling effect, is hypothesized by Geoffrey West to be in part due to the efficiency increases in the ability to share information faster. He refers to cities as time-accelerators which effectively fast-forward time by allowing for information to flow faster than the natural rate, which produces more wealth, innovation, and strife.
My own thinking is that this could be taken a step further and applied to the internet, and social networks, as digital cities which facilitate even faster exchange of information and connect the entire planet to accelerate time even faster. Thus leading to exponential progress, but also the quickening in the pace of life.
Connections
There Is Likely A Universal Law That Defines Scale
Link Explanation: The scaling laws discussed in the current note are discussed across a wider range of scenarios in the linked note. The interesting point is that this common scaling law implies that there may be some universal force or law that defines how something scales.