// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did info ecology say to its date? You're a-maize-ing data.
Information ecology is the application of ecological concepts for modeling the information society. It considers the dynamics and properties of the increasingly dense, complex and important digital informational environment. "Information ecology" often is used as metaphor, viewing the information space as an ecosystem, the information ecosystem.
Information ecology also makes a connection to the concept of collective intelligence and knowledge ecology.[1] Eddy et al. (2014) use information ecology for science-policy integration in ecosystems-based management (EBM).
Networked information economy
[edit]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,[2] 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 and Vicki O'Day in their book Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart[3] apply the ecology metaphor to local environments, such as libraries and schools, in preference to the more common metaphors for technology as tool, text, or system.
In different domains and disciplines
[edit]Anthropology
[edit]Nardi and O'Day's book represents the first specific treatment of information ecology by anthropologists. H. E. Kuchka (a collective pseudonym[4]) situates information within socially-distributed cognition of cultural systems.[5][6] Casagrande and Peters[7] use information ecology for an anthropological critique of Southwest US water policy. Stepp (1999)[8] published a prospectus for the anthropological study of information ecology.
Knowledge management
[edit]Information ecology was used as book title by Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak,[9] 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
[edit]Law schools represent another area where the phrase is gaining increasing acceptance, e.g. NYU Law School Conference Towards a Free Information Ecology[10] and a lecture series on Information ecology at Duke University Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Library science
[edit]The field of library science has seen significant adoption of the term and librarians have been described by Nardi and O'Day as a "keystone species in information ecology",[11][12][13] and references to information ecology range as far afield as the Collaborative Digital Reference Service of the Library of Congress,[14] to children's library database administrator in Russia.
Science-policy integration (SPI) / Ecosystems-based management (EBM)
[edit]Eddy et al. (2014) use principles of information ecology to develop a framework for integrating scientific information in decision-making in ecosystem-based management (EBM). Using a metaphor of how a species adapts to environmental changes through information processing, they developed a 3-tiered model that differentiates primary, secondary and tertiary levels of information processing, within both the technical and human domains.
See also
[edit]
- Biosemiotics
- Collaborative filtering
- Collective intelligence
- Collective memory
- Complex adaptive system
- Crowd psychology
- Diffusion of innovations
- Digital ecosystem
- Environmental health
- Information ethics
- Information infrastructure
- Information pollution
- Information science
- Information society
- Knowledge commons
- Knowledge ecosystem
- Knowledge management
- Knowledge organization
- Knowledge tagging
- Media ecology
- Sociology of knowledge
Citations
[edit]- ↑ Pór & Molloy 2000.
- ↑ Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. available under a Creative Commons. Archived from the original on 2006-04-30. Retrieved 2006-04-29.
- ↑ Nardi & O'Day 1999.
- ↑ Kuchka, H. E. (n.d.). "About the H. E. Kuchka". kuchka.org. Archived from the original on 17 September 2013.
- ↑ Kuchka, H. E. (2013). "Information ecology". kuchka.org. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 2013-12-21.
One goal of information ecology is to understand how information is distributed and processed in cultural systems in order to understand why cultures successfully adapt to changes beyond their control, fail catastrophically, or become socio-pathological.
- ↑ Cf. Stepp 1999, p. 45
- ↑ Casagrande, David G.; Peters, Charles (4 June 2013). "Ecomyopia meets the longue durée: An information ecology of the increasingly arid Southwestern United States" (PDF). In Kopnina, Helen; Shoreman-Ouimet, Eleanor (eds.). Environmental anthropology: Future directions. Routledge Studies in Anthropology. New York City: Routledge. pp. 97–144. doi:10.4324/9780203403341. ISBN 978-0-415-51748-5. OCLC 778425814. ResearchGate 322297859.
- ↑ Stepp, John R. (1999). "Prospectus for information ecology" (PDF). Journal of Ecological Anthropology. 3 (1): 39–73. doi:10.5038/2162-4593.3.1.4.
- ↑ Davenport & Prusak 1997.
- ↑ The Information Law Institute at New York University School of Law (2000). "A Free Information Ecology in the Digital Environment" (Conference website). Archived from the original on 27 June 2001.
- ↑ "Reference Service in a Digital Age: An LC Institute". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 2006-03-07. Retrieved 2017-12-29.
- ↑ "Info Ecology Program Notes: "Weirdly Wonderful" - Librarians as Spotted Owls". Archived from the original on May 2, 2004. Retrieved April 2, 2004.
- ↑ Nardi & O'Day 1999, p. 81: "Through our own fieldwork in libraries, we have identified librarians as a keystone species."
- ↑ Grotke, Abigail (6 December 2001). "Collaborative Digital Reference Service: Knowledge bases for e-libraries" (Slideshow). Library of Congress / Coalition for Networked Information. Archived from the original (PPT) on 2006-03-07.
References
[edit]- Barlow, John Perry (March 1994). "The economy of ideas: A framework for patents and copyrights in the Digital Age". Wired. Vol. 2, no. 3. San Francisco: Wired Ventures. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on 15 August 2000. The author's unedited version was published as Barlow, John Perry (3 August 1995) [1 October 1992]. "Selling wine without bottles: The economy of mind on the global net". eff.org. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Archived from the original on 20 December 1996.
- Capurro, Rafael (1990). "Towards an information ecology". In Wormell, Irene (ed.). Information quality: Definitions and dimensions : proceedings of a NORDINFO seminar, Royal School of Librarianship, Copenhagen, 1989. London: Taylor Graham. pp. 122–139. ISBN 978-0-947568-43-6. OCLC 24756679.
- Davenport, Thomas H.; Prusak, Laurence (1997). Information Ecology: Mastering the information and knowledge environment. New York City: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-511168-2.
- Eddy, Brian G.; Hearn, Brian; Luther, Joan E.; van Zyll de Jong, Michael; Bowers, Wade; Parsons, Reg; Piercey, Douglas; Strickland, Guy; Wheeler, Barry (2014). "An information ecology approach to science–policy integration in adaptive management of social-ecological systems". Ecology and Society. 19 (3) 40. doi:10.5751/ES-06752-190340. ISSN 1708-3087.
- Finin, Tim; Joshi, Anupam; Kolari, Pranam; Java, Akshay; Kale, Anubav; Krandikar, Amit (2007). "The Information ecology of social media and online communities" (PDF). AI Magazine. 28 (3): 77–92. doi:10.1609/aimag.v29i3.2158.
- Malhotra, Yogesh (1999). "Knowledge management for organizational white-waters: An ecological framework". Knowledge Management. 2 (6): 18–21.
- Nardi, Bonnie A.; O'Day, Vicki L. (February 1999). Information ecologies: Using technology with heart. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/3767.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-262-14066-9. Several chapters were republished in First Monday. 4 (5). 3 May 1999.
- Pór, George; Molloy, Janice (October 2000). "Nurturing systemic wisdom through knowledge ecology" (PDF). The Systems Thinker. Vol. 11, no. 8. Pegasus Communications. pp. 1–5. ISSN 1050-2726. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-10-05. Retrieved 2009-09-07.
- 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). Princeton, New Jersey: Rinton Press: 26–48. ResearchGate 220200671.
- Brown, John Seely; Duguid, Paul (2000). The social life of information. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 978-0-87584-762-7. OCLC 42475952.