Information Ecology: Cultures and The Nature of Networks

We are living in an information society with the help of digital media which we have created by our very own hands; we have defined it within our very own system.  We rely on the digital media we created to help us work faster, smarter and more efficiently. However, nothing is 100% perfect and many have realized that there lies a very deep problem within. What if people are getting too involved and reliant on the digital world? Is there any solution to that? The answer is yes. Information ecology is a methodology which was created to emphasize on the findings of the development.

There’s a difference between the environment of the virtual world and the actual physical world we are living in. We can feel, touch, sense, and be involved with the objects in the physical world. However, in the media world, it’s only formed by two elements and we call them the nodes and the flow. These two components are invisible, work closely and are interdependent on each other to provide us with information and tools which we use on a daily basis in the cyber world. They grow and feed on each other and as a result, new information will be created from the reaction. Also, nodes and flow behaves like our human brain, they have the ability to evaluate on past information in order to form better information in the future. Without these two elements working together, information will not be delivered and thus you can deem the virtual world as completely useless and worthless.

To make it simple to understand, basically nodes are destinations and flow is the process that is being used to deliver information on the Internet from one place to another across the globe. There are many ways information can be delivered to its destination. Let’s say flow was corrupted or can’t be used due to network issues, nodes will find other alternative flows to reach to the end user. It is impossible that a desired node requested by an end user will not reach to the person unless the problem lies within the end user, not the process. Another example, let’s say nodes are human beings, passengers who want to travel from one place to another and airplanes are like the flow that bring the passengers from one place to their destination anywhere across the globe.

There are four patterns of how nodes and flow works within information ecology.

1.       Interdependency – It is vital for nodes and flow to work closely together in order to survive, their survival means doing their job by serving information to human beings. Each node is connected to another no matter where they are, they are interdependent on each other. Let’s say an airplane is flying from one place to another, however, during the process, there’s a communication interruption between the two initial nodes, therefore, in order to have an alternative option, another node will always  be ready and on standby and is prepared to respond and communicate with the other nodes. Node can be either the father or the mother, same goes to the flow, and the end product which is the information is like their children that are the kind of relationship they have in the virtual world.

2.       Change – Nodes can be influenced and changed by other nodes along the passing process. It’s just like how we human beings can also be changed and influenced by our surroundings, our environment, and people revolved around our life. We can never know where we will end up tomorrow or in 10 years time. Anything can change with a blink of eyes. However, there’s always a purpose, reasons of these changes take place. Each of these elements will have a meaning in our life. Just like nodes, they change accordingly along the way and interdependent on each new nodes they meet in order to adapt to the new environment and new information they have come across with along the way.

3.       Time-boundness - Many have said that time is gold. Today we live in an information age where information is being delivered to us at a rapid speed. We need to keep up to date of happenings, if not, we will be left behind.  Time is an essential factor, a driven factor. Old information can be replaced by new in just minutes. In the cyber world, constant change is taking place from nodes to nodes and that’s something which we are not in control of, anything can happen. It all depends on the priority of the information being delivered and the how important the information is at the moment.

4.       Differentiation – Each node has their very own unique job they have to accomplish and they can only be considered useful and worthy if they have accomplished their job. Usually nodes are like special groups where they are formed together and each of them with their own unique skill and ability to achieve a common goal, which is delivering a particular information to an end user. The funny thing is that in cyber world, nodes work best together if they are highly differentiated from each other, the total opposite of the physical world we are living in today. However, there’s one similarity which is differentiation is the reductive of complexity. This concept works in both worlds. People with different thinking’s and different minds can have more opinions and solutions on a particular matter from different approaches and perceptions.

In conclusion, nodes and flow are “invisible” agents in the cyber world where many people do not know their existence and the importance of their job of enabling us to retrieve on the desired information we require. Both of them can’t live without each other, like the saying goes, most and best things in life come in pairs. They work interdependently on each other. Nodes can be known as destinations, starting points, finishing stops, and rest stops while flow can be known as the tools, ways, methods of carrying these information around, the pathway, the routes.