Information Ecology
Ecology, in a biological sense, is the study of how living things relate to one another in a particular habitat or environment. An ecological food (energy) web chart seeks to explain this relationship in terms of an arrow diagram.
All types of plants in a particular area are placed in the bottom row of the diagram because they are food producers (or energy storers). Consumers of these are placed in the second row. They are called first order consumers. Arrows are used to show the movement of food (or the energy stored in the food) from the plant to the consumer. One animal may have arrows from a variety of plant sources (ants eating seeds from a tree, dead matter of another plant, etc.). The third row would contain animals that eat either the first order consumers or the plants (or both). The arrows would again come from the food source to the new animal.
The food is the source of the arrow. The arrow represents the direction of the flow of energy (stored in the food). The resulting diagram gives a pictorial grasp of the intricate balance of life in the area. It enables the effect of any change in numbers of any one type of animal or plant to be more easily evaluated.
Cappurro’s (1989) use of the term to describe the complex interaction of information and its movement in the web environment is apt. The direction of flow of information (or communication method), often bidirectional, is represented by the arrow. The data (or information) is the commodity being transported. Thus it is appropriate to describe an Information Ecology. The diagram itself reveals the patterns of communication used in the information transfer.
Future considerations for Information Sharing
With the exponential growth of information being stored or accessed from electronic sources it is critical that these information flows are researched and analysed if consumers are to have ready access to even part of this vast store of knowledge. Some of the factors to be considered in this future planning should be:
1. The growth of Peer-to-Peer networks provides a method of reducing the load on servers. The flow of information is no longer from the user via the servers to the source but can be directed via a vast array of other users in order to obtain and consolidate the information required (Barkai, 2000).
2. With the information being supplied from reliable and casual sources (blogs, personal web pages, etc.) it becomes vital that users are trained to evaluate the source and hence the validity of the information. Almost daily ‘facts’ are published in newspapers, on the television or in blogs detailing the latest news event or breakthrough in medical technology. These are very often followed by letters and articles exposing the information to be biased, misleading or written by someone with their own hidden agenda.
3. The current problems of major newspapers in maintaining a readership due to the loss of revenue from classified sources (career, house sales, etc.) to the Internet suggests the eventual transfer from these hardcopy sources to a paid Internet subscription. This in itself would only transfer journalism to another medium but could have the result that more users would choose less authenticated sources. On the plus side the load on servers could be reduced if a peer-to-peer distribution network based on current newsagent webs were introduced.
4. The loss of historical information needs to be addressed. An example of this could be the records departments of major utilities. In the past new maps were drawn and the old ones were stored in order to keep an historical record. In the present day the old maps, as computer images, are modified. The originals are not always saved. This problem of modification and ‘pollution’ of information can be extended to data bank records in a vast number of areas leading to problems tracing necessary previous information.
5. Cappurro (1989) discusses the imbalance of power that could result if information access in third world countries was not equal to that of more advances societies. I would extend this to our own community. The introduction of the proposed 3G (and Telstra’s 4G) network will result in the movement of government and reliable consumer information to the Internet. With the proposed significant increase in costs of access to these networks (both in terms of the hardware required and the broadband access fees), a large percentage of users will be similarly severely disadvantaged and hence dis-empowered.
6. Cappuro (1989) suggests that the “information is always relative to a theoretical and/or practical pre-understanding” of the user. With information being globally available this is becoming an important consideration in international relations. I feel that the image of our own country may in the future be formed, not by official and/or reliable sources, but by the advertising and unedited blogs produced by ordinary citizens. Blogs, for example, may be interpreted by our own readers as the imaginative or wishful outpourings of ordinary citizens and not necessarily indicative of their actual values and behavior. In a more restrictive culture these could give the impression of a decadent society. I am not sure how this can be countered but a solution, probably educational, may have to be found in order to counteract the unconscious biases formed by future leaders in both the political and economic sphere.
7. The legal access issues to books and other media will need to be resolved if the use of electronic publishing and copying continues to escalate.
Barkai, D. (2000). An Introduction to Peer-to-Peer Computing. Retrieved on May 28, 2009 from http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&hs=rbM&q=introduction+to+peer-to-peer+computing+intel&btnG=Search&meta=
Cappurro, R. (1989) Towards an Information Ecology. Retrieved on May 28, 2009 from http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/2221/01/nordinf.htm
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