Module Five - Information Ecologies

I feel that the idea of the Internet being an ecology runs in line with what our basic understanding of what the Internet is.

Defining ecology 1) "the branch of biology dealing with with relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings" 2) the study of the interaction of people with their environment" (The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary, Fourth Edition, 2004)

The Internet is a vast and varied resource of information and communication in which people are interacting with on a daily basis. The Internet could be broken down into many different separate ecology's, for example social, work, study, industry entertainment. The list could go on indefinitely.

Information and communication are the basis for the concept of and information ecology. The Internet give us the ability to present our knowledge of information on a world wide platform and thus create an ecology within it in its own rights. Communication is how we are sending the information to the world at large to express these ideas.

The information is what is creating the ecology and communication is how we spread it. The Internet is a tool for this ecology and human input is what makes it.