One way to look at things… Web Ecology
We’ve been talking a lot about the ‘coherent nature’ of the web – how the various micro-communities, groups, market forces, and innumerable other things act together to create a coherent entity that is separate from it’s originating forces. And we’re talked a bit about where we’re going with this project. Fascinating stuff, really.
Studying these coherent phenomena is fascinating, and it’s trivially easy to setup a test – the internet works on its own, after all. Part of this project’s function is to give you tips – areas we can test, scientifically, so that we have aggregate pictures of what really happens. But that’s a subject for another time.
What I’d like to see out of this is a new breed. Those of us who recognize that the internet is a fascinating beast that can be watched, and sometimes poked and prodded (nicely.) I’d like to coin the term “web ecologist” for this. A quick google tells me that it’s not in use. A web ecologist is someone who studies the net, runs experiments, and tweaks, to see what the net is actually doing.
This works best if we get a pack, a community. Part-time web ecologists who get interested in whats going on, propose experiments, and participate in the community. The sheer dynamics of our tests and actions can be part of the coherence of the web (ever hear of the ‘slashdot effect’? – more on that in my next post.) It gives a nice name to what we’re doing here, but more importantly, it captures the spirit of what we’re measuring. The internet is here, and all of our actions, individually and collectively, form part of it’s collective being. So why not look into it? Why not be a web ecologist?
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