

The Power of Digital Ecosystems - tomh-
http://000fff.org/the-power-of-digital-ecoystems/

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alexandros
Being in Digital Ecosystems research myself, I would say the author is missing
one important point: Absence of single points of control and failure. Natural
ecosystems are rarely if ever dependent on singletons (single species or
single organism) to be sustained. Their adaptivity and resilience comes from
that one fact. All the examples the author states are tied to a single
corporate entity, often designed so, and therefore cannot exceed the lifespan
of the entity that created them. A great example of that is napster. Once the
central entity was shut down by way of courts, the ecosystem evaporated.

In a sense the Internet and the Web are much closer to the true Digital
Ecosystem, even though purists such as myself can still find things that can
be improved, single points of control/failure etc. but at least they are not
as pronounced as the ones present in the star-topology twiter/amazon/apple
ecosystems.

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ThomPete
To a certain extent I agree with that.

But ecosystems are not only biological they are also physical and the sun is a
pretty good candidate for a singleton then isns't?

To me the defining factor is the flow and exchange of energy throughout the
system. In digital ecosystems the data is what needs to flow.

The internet is obviously the mother of all digital ecosystems but it is also
restrictive (firewalls etc) which keeps data from flowing.

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alexandros
The data (and metadata) is definitely important. And yes the Sun is a
singleton in our solar system. Closer to home, if anything goes wrong with the
earth, (asteroid, LHC, some unknown weapons programme) we're all doomed,
including all ecosystems on the planet (depending of course on the magnitude
of the disaster). The field of global existential risks is devoted to asking
such questions.

That being said, I would rather my work depends on the sun's or earth's
continued existence, rather than on twitter's or facebook's or amazon's
uptime/finances/goodwill. We should aim to remove SPOFs/SPOCs to the extent
possible.

