Economic and social interactions are shifting to digital platforms which grow into vast ecosystems where user engagement creates value for members while ecosystem orchestrators harvest massive revenue. The digital ecosystem business model succeeds by adeptly navigating fast-changing environments, including new technologies and volatile demands, through dynamic innovation in a decentralized decision-making setting. This renders digital platform ecosystems complex adaptive systems. Recognizing that natural ecosystems are a prime example of complex adaptive systems, we propose a systematic hierarchical framework for describing and understanding digital ecosystems, rooted in ecology and evolution. Our framework compares digital ecosystems hosted by societies to natural ecosystems embedded in biomes, products to species, and technologies and elements of business strategy to the genetic makeup of a species. As digital platforms face heightened scrutiny about their socio-economic power and societal value, our approach contributes to the development of deeper understanding and sustainable governance of the digital economy.
The ecosystem is moving
Considerations for distributed and decentralized technologies from the perspective of a product that many would like to see decentralize....
Ecosystem Review
A review of decentralized social media ecosystems published by Twitter's "bluesky" team on the 21st January 2021
Systems of Global Governance in the Era of Human-Machine Convergence
Technology is increasingly shaping our social structures and is becoming a driving force in altering human biology. Besides, human activities already proved to have a significant impact on the Earth system which in turn generates complex feedback loops between social and ecological systems. Furthermore, since our species evolved relatively fast from small groups of hunter-gatherers to large and technology-intensive urban agglomerations, it is not a surprise that the major institutions of human society are no longer fit to cope with the present complexity. In this note we draw foundational parallelisms between neurophysiological systems and ICT-enabled social systems, discussing how frameworks rooted in biology and physics could provide heuristic value in the design of evolutionary systems relevant to politics and economics. In this regard we highlight how the governance of emerging technology (i.e. nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science), and the one of climate change both presently confront us with a number of connected challenges. In particular: historically high level of inequality; the co-existence of growing multipolar cultural systems in an unprecedentedly connected world; the unlikely reaching of the institutional agreements required to deviate abnormal trajectories of development. We argue that wise general solutions to such interrelated issues should embed the deep understanding of how to elicit mutual incentives in the socio-economic subsystems of Earth system in order to jointly concur to a global utility function (e.g. avoiding the reach of planetary boundaries and widespread social unrest). We leave some open questions on how techno-social systems can effectively learn and adapt with respect to our understanding of geopolitical complexity.
Ecosystem Plugins - Wesley's notes
Bridging the interop gap and addressing the long-tail of user needs
Role of digitalization in environment, social and governance, and sustainability: Review-based study for implications
Digitalization gives people access to a vast network of untapped data, which has the potential to help society and the environment. Smart systems connected to the internet can systematically provide a unique opportunity to solve difficulties related to long-term sustainability. The goals are to create an egalitarian, ecologically sustainable, and healthy society. Technological resources are envisioned as game-changing instruments. Three key concerns integration benefits are highlighted here: (i) sustainable development goals, (ii) socio-economic development, and (iii) the role of digital technology in environmental sustainability. This viewpoint describes the potential that digitization can create a future sustainable society. The technological network would unite the urban and rural worlds under a shared banner of sustainable development, keeping all social elements in the loop. Nations that take a comprehensive strategy will be able to provide equitable growth and an efficient, sustainable, and digital existence for their citizens. As a result, digitization provides better living conditions, active public involvement, clean governance, and transparency in public welfare programs and processes. People who are well-informed, self-aware, and digitally equipped will be better learners, thinkers, reformers, participators, and change and growth agents, marching forward on sustainable progress. The advantages of digitization in hastening the transition to sustainable industrial processes and improving people's health and happiness are explored. Finally, the perspective encapsulates the advantages of digitization by offering a holistic vision of how technology could aid in addressing major challenges such as endangered world biodiversity and climate change.
Evaluating Sustainable Digitalization: A Carbon-Aware Framework for Enhancing Eco-Friendly Business Process Reengineering
In an era where sustainability is paramount, understanding the environmental impact of digitalizing business processes is critical. Despite the growing emphasis on sustainable practices, there is a lack of comprehensive methodologies to evaluate how digitalization impacts environmental sustainability compared to traditional processes. This paper introduces a carbon-aware methodological framework specifically designed to assess the sustainability of business process reengineering through digitalization. The Digital Green framework quantitatively analyzes the environmental costs associated with digital transformation, ensuring that truly sustainable digitalization results in lower resource consumption relative to the complexity of the process being digitalized. To demonstrate its effectiveness, the framework was applied to a case study involving the reengineering of an administrative process at a small university in southern Italy. The case study highlighted the framework’s ability to quantify the environmental benefits or detriments of digital transformation, thus guiding organizations toward more sustainable digital practices. This research contributes to the field by offering a concrete tool for aligning digitalization efforts with ecological sustainability, and by paving the way for integration with initiatives such as the Green Software Foundation’s Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) specifications.
Digital Degrowth: Radically Rethinking our Digital Futures
We are fast approaching the point of “peak digital”, with the continued mass production and excessive consumption of digital technologies set to become a key driver of climate crisis, ecological breakdown and ongoing societal instability.<br /> <br /><i>Digital Degrowth</i> is a call to completely rethink our digital futures in these fast-changing times. It explores how degrowth thinking and alternate forms of “radically sustainable computing” might support ambitions of sustainable, scaled-down and equitable ways of living with digital technologies. Neil Selwyn proposes a rebalancing of digital technology use: digital degrowth is not a call for simply making reduced use of the digital technologies that we already have – rather it is an argument to reimagine digital practices that maximise societal benefits with minimal environmental and social impact. Drawing on illustrative examples from across computer science, hacker and environmental activist communities, this book examines how core degrowth principles of conviviality, autonomy and care are already being used to reimagine alternate forms of digital technology.<br /> <br />Original and stimulating, this is essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication, sustainability studies, political ecology, computer/data sciences, and across the social sciences.
The Ecosystem
Create collective knowledge by crowdsourcing and adapting governance innovations.
Planetary carambolage: The evolutionary political economy of technology, nature and work
The following editorial introduces the special issue (SI) on “Work, Environment and Planetary-scale Computation in Political-Economic Evolution”. Here, however, we go beyond an outline of what each contribution to the SI addresses, and attempt to draw a more pronounced shared embedding of the arguments that have come to the fore. The original idea of this SI was to synthesize a range of contemporary global political-economic challenges, i.e. (1) technology (esp. digital transformation), (2) nature (esp. ecological crisis) and (3) work (esp. precarization via the evolving platform economy). The main argument developed in this editorial reflection focuses on the common ground and origin of those processes found in the complex evolution of capitalist development. We frame the latter by assigning it a new term, i.e. “planetary carambolage”.
A Decent Identity Part 1: Theory
This essay outlines a set of capabilities and goals comprising decent social computing and then establishes a framework for assessing how well an ecosystem’s identity system supports those goals and capabilities.
Co-Creation: Systems Thinking Beyond the Machine
Complexity thinking is all the rage — in the arts and sciences. Yet, there are two different strands of thinking about complexity, which are often confounded. The first comes from cybernetics, focussing on control in complex situations. The second is ecological, aiming at sustainable participation in a reality beyond control. Their difference rests on a fundamental distinction: is complexity rooted in feedback regulation or collective co-creation? While feedback remains mechanistic, co-creation generates new spaces of possibilities. We need it to understand life and its evolution. And it empowers us to rewrite our future, to escape our mechanistic cage without abandoning scientific rigor. In this paper, we illustrate how we implement these powerful yet abstract principles through our artistic and philosophical practice.
Ecology is not yet ready for AI—and why that matters
Ecology is not yet ready for AI—and why that matters
We Need To Rewild The Internet
The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.
Autonomous Forest | LAS Art Foundation
Autonomous Forest is a living work of art and a new techno-legal entity that reimagines ecological regeneration
What if we thought about digital spaces like an ecologist? We’d consider the incredible communities that come together over the interwebs – yes, even through social media – in a totally different way. substack.com/home/post/p-192761679
Ecological Media
Interconnected, relational, emergent. Socially networked media rooted in ecological relationalities.
We Need To Rewild The Internet
we were online
The information flaneur: a fresh look at information seeking
Trails and public spaces — Rafael M. Batista
It was a huge honor to present the opening keynote address at #SIGIR2026 and to talk about the need for IR to resist uncritical adoption of…
Chatty Community Gardens
