[sedatk]

I mean, yes, you're missing something, the first and foremost, Internet. :) Its sole purpose was to solve the information access problem in a decentralized way. That was the rationale behind the ARPANET project.

Then, DNS came, which is also a decentralized solution to the name resolution problem. BGP routing is also similarly decentralized. World Wide Web itself is decentralized. IRC is decentralized. These technologies predate almost everything you mentioned.

I agree with your sentiment that it's mostly a cycle. I just wanted to emphasize that decentralization had never been a novel idea. We've always had decentralization, it's not like a new revolutionary thing as it's presented. That's my point.

[lorean_victor]

tbf I mentioned the www era decentralisation mostly.

but I agree. as mentioned earlier, actually the fact that decentralisation has happened multiple times before, while convenience was kind of against it, is the reason I think it will most definitely happen again as well. I'm even assuming it won't be far off by considering similarities in some respects to the situation before two other large-scale decentralisations we've observed (www and apps), though of course that is the same as predicting when the next platform shift will occur and that's not someone can claim with meaningful precision, IMO.