Module Five Information Ecologies

Concept: Active Communication Generates IdentityAwareness

• An internet users identity is created by participating. As part of a newsgroup or online chat, members establish their identity by posting and replying within these groups. When participating in an online gathering, members project who they are by what they contribute.


• "Lurkers" - non participating memebrs of a group, list or forum.

Information Ecologies

“We define an information ecology to be a system of people, practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment. In information ecologies, the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technology.”
(Nardi & O’Day, 1999)

These patterns are the four basic dimensions of an information ecology:

Interdependency - This pattern describes the relationship between the connection points inside the 'information ecology'. Central organisation points such as government bodies, banks, university's etc are a focus point for incoming and out going information. They communicate with each other and help shape future development of communication and of the information ecology as a whole.

change - The development of information and communication linking to create something new. Small changes can effect alot of users within the information ecology. Large changes can "reconstitute the rules of survival"(Stalder, 1997). In any ecology change is inevitable, constant and esencial for growth.

time-boundness - A pattern describing the relevance of information at the time it is sourced. For some users within the information ecology, information needs constant updating to fullfill its purpose. Others require 'archive' information.

differentiation - In short, this pattern realtes to flexibility. The ability to adapt information as required within the ecology, as simply as possible.

The following Q & A describe and define 'information ecology' and the role of information and communication within this ecology.

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

An ecology of any kind deals with the relations and interactions between organisms and their environment. Humans interacting within the online environment and all the elements that make up this environment, for me, describes the 'online' or 'cyber' ecology.


Thinking of the Internet in these terms rather than just a pc connected to a modem

a/helps to explain the 'signal flow' of incoming and out going information making trouble shooting and adapting to technological change easier,

b/gives the user a deeper sense of responsibility in what information they share, promote and send because the other internet users become part of thier 'community' not just anonymous avatars.

c/helps explain that data is just data until it is put into context by its being published and read and subsiquently thought about.



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


I struggled with this question. Here's what I came up with from the information on the reference sites and units DB.

Information is data that is only given substance and put into a context when its published, read and subsequently thought about.


Communication is an action that produces the creation, spread and growth of information.


An ecology describes relations and interactions between an organism and their environment. Communication is an organisms action-not the resulting information.


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

To me, this question is closely associatted to the last question. As discribed above, an ecology is the relations and interactions of organisms within an environment. Communication is part of that interaction and relations, part of the information ecology, not an ecology in itself.