Ecologies

How might the metaphor of an ‘ecology’ impact on the way you think about, understand or use the Internet?

Ecology – the study of the interactive relationship between living things and their ENVIRONMENT (Collins internet-linked dictionary of Sociology).

After reading ‘Information Ecologies’ by Felix Stadler and ‘Towards an Information Ecology’ by Rafael Capurro, here is what I interrupt the metaphor of an ‘ecology’ when I use the Internet. Firstly an Internet ecology is the relationship and interactions between people and the online environment, in particular the Web.

I mostly use the Internet to do research, interact with fellow students and retrieve my university workload. So I think in information ecologies, the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technology.

An ecology responds to local environmental changes and local interventions. An ecology is a place that is scaled to individuals. In an ecology, we are not cogs in sweeping sociological processes. Instead, we are individuals with real relationships to other individuals. The scale of an ecology allows us to find individual points of leverage, ways into the system, and avenues of intervention.

What I will take away from NET11 is that, firstly the Internet is an ever evolving system and that changes can occur all the time. My research skills have increased due to the way that I interrupt the results I get from the type of keywords that I use. Therefore I am more aware of how my interaction with the Internet will determine what reaction I will get from it.

How are the concepts ‘information’ and ‘communication’ understood within the framework of an ‘information ecology’?

An information ecology is a complex system of parts and relationships. It exhibits diversity and experiences continual evolution. Different parts of an ecology coevolve, changing together according to the relationships in the system. Several keystone species necessary to the survival of the ecology are present. Information ecologies have a sense of locality.

An information ecology is marked by strong interrelationships and dependencies among its different parts. The parts of an information ecology may be as different from each other as the sand, sunlight, saltwater, and starfish of a marine ecology, but they are as closely bound together. Change in an ecology is systemic. When one element is changed, effects can be felt throughout the whole system. To get a mental image, imagine dropping a pebble into a pond and watching the ripple effect spread towards the edges of the pond.

Communication within a ecology depends on the type of information received. If a sender does not communicate that they would like a response, then they are unlikely to get a response. We as humans need to communicate; this is taught to us from birth, that if we want something we need to communicate it with verbal words otherwise we get nothing. The same is said for when we interact with technology, we must communicate what we want in order to get it.

Without communication there would be no information.

Why don’t we talk of a ‘communication ecology’?

As my last sentence in the previous question states “Without communication there would be no information”. Therefore communication falls under the banner of information as I see it anyway.

Different communication ecologies are constructed to achieve different goals. For example, when finding health information is the goal, a different set of communication preferences will be generated than when the goal is to figure out where to get the best buys or how to stay on top of the local community.

On the Internet these days, users have various forms in which they may communicate such as, email, chat, and forums to name a few. But with all types of communication on the Internet users must abide by netiquette rules. Online communication is fast and precise, but it has it pitfalls as well, like systems crashing, loss of data, and miscommunication due to the lack of visual body language.