We see this happening to a limited extent if we look simultaneously at the business and political worlds. Economic forces are pushing toward a regionalization of commerce, and political forces are tending toward the breakup of nations. Bigger and smaller. Businesses will do the same. Companies like Time Inc., News Corp., and Bertelsmann keep getting bigger and bigger.
People worry about control of the world's media being concentrated in so few hands.
The value of being small needs no explanation. At this point in history, it is hard to imagine that our highly structured and centralist world will morph into a planetful of loosely connected physical and digital communities. But it will. It is, for example, easy to see who will build the road in my village. It is considerably harder to see who will connect our villages, especially if some have less wealth or control than others.