> Scaled beyond a single tree-sized entity I mean. Sure you can put a lot of trees together to do more, but each tree has to do its own small scale sourcing of water, sun, air, etc.

Vertical versus horizontal scaling.

> You can take each part of that and make a sizable facility that's dedicated to only handling a specific part very efficiently. As an example, if the process needs electricity you could set up small self contained solar panel units, or you can produce a few magnitudes more with one nuclear powerplant. No point in digging a hole with a thousand spoons when an excavator can do it in one swoop.

Microservices versus monoliths.