Information ecology

In the context of an evolving information society, the term information ecology marks a connection between ecological ideas with the dynamics and properties of the increasingly dense, complex and important digital informational environment and has been gaining progressively wider acceptance in a growing number of disciplines. "Information ecology" often is used as metaphor, viewing the informational space as an ecosystem.

Information ecology also makes a connection to the concept of collective intelligence and Knowledge ecology (Pór 2000).

Language of ecology

Information ecology draws on the language of ecology - habitat, species, evolution, ecosystem, niche, growth, equilibrium, etc. - to describe and analyze information systems from a perspective that considers the distribution and abundance of organisms, their relationships with each other, and how they influence and are influenced by their environment. The virtual lack of boundaries between information systems and the impact of information technology on economic, social and environmental activities frequently calls on an information ecologist to consider local information ecosystems in the context of larger systems, and of the evolution of global information ecosystems. See also list of ecology topics.

Networked information economy

In The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, a book published in 2006 and available under a Creative Commons license on its own wikispace, Yochai Benkler provides an analytic framework for the emergence of the networked information economy that draws deeply on the language and perspectives of information ecology together with observations and analyses of high-visibility examples of successful peer production processes, citing Wikipedia as a prime example.

Bonnie Nardi in one of her book "Information Ecology" (Nardi & O’Day 1999) indicates for instance librarians as keystone species in information ecologies.

In different domains / disciplines

Knowledge management and computer science

Information ecology was used as book title by Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak (Davenport & Prusak 1997), with a focus on the organization dimensions of information ecology. There was also an academic research project at DSTC called Information ecology, concerned with distributed information systems and online communities.

Law

Law schools represent another area where the phrase is gaining increasing acceptance, e.g. NYU Law School Conference Towards a Free Information Ecology and a lecture series on Information ecology at Duke University Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

Library science

The field of library science has seen significant adoption of the term and librarians have been described by Bonnie Nardi as a "keystone species in information ecology", and references to information ecology range as far afield as the Collaborative Digital Reference Service of the Library of Congress, to children's library database administrator in Russia.

Biology

There has also been increasing use of "information ecology" as a concept among ecologists involved in digital mapping of botanical resources, including research by Zhang Xinshi at the Institute of Botany of the China Academy of Science; also see a presentation to the Information Ecology SIG at Yale University's Forestry School.

See also

• Collective intelligence
• Crowd psychology
• Diffusion of innovations
• Digital ecosystem
• Emergence
• Knowledge ecosystem
• Knowledge management
• Knowledge tagging
• Media ecology
• Noosphere
• Sociology of knowledge
• Territoriality (nonverbal communication)

References

• Barlow, John Perry (1994). "The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net". Wired (magazine). March 1994. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas_pr.html. 
• Capurro, Rafael (1990). "Towards an Information Ecology". Irene Wormell (Ed.): Information and Quality. London: Taylor Graham. pp. 288. http://www.capurro.de/nordinf.htm. 
• Davenport, Thomas H.; Prusak, Laurence (1997). Information Ecology. Oxford University Press. pp. 288. ISBN 0195111680. http://argus-acia.com/content/review001.html. 
• Finin, Tim; Joshi, Anupam; Kolari, Pranam; Java, Akshay; Kale, Anubav; Krandikar, Amit (2007). "The Information ecology of social media and online communities". AI Magazine 28 (3): 77–92. http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/paper/html/id/371/The-Information-ecology-of-social-media-and-online-communities. 
• Malhotra, Yogesh (1999). "Knowledge Management for Organizational White Waters: An Ecological Framework". Knowledge Management 2 (6): 18–21. http://www.brint.com/papers/ecology.htm. 
• Nardi, Bonnie; O’Day, V. (1999). Information Ecology: Using Technology with Heart. Cambridge: MIT Press. pp. 288. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/672/582. 
• Pór, G. (2000). "Nurturing Systemic Wisdom through Knowledge Ecology". The Systems Thinker 11 (8): 1–5. http://www.community-intelligence.com/files/KE%20in%20SysThinker.pdf. 
• Soylu, Ahmet; De Causmaecker, Patrick; Wild, Fridolin (2010). "Ubiquitous Web for Ubiquitous Computing Environments: The Role of Embedded Semantics". Journal of Mobile Multimedia 6 (1): 26–48. http://www.rintonpress.com/journals/jmmonline.html. 
• Seely Brown, John; Duguid, Paul (2000). The Social Life of Information. Harvard Business School Press.