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Ecological System Meets 'Digital Ecosystem': Can Ict Benefit From Understanding Biology?, Robert J. Whelan

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

The description of a digital ecosystem as a “loosely coupled, demand-driven, domain clustered, agent-based, self organised, collaborative environment where agents form temporary coalitions for a specific purpose or goal, and each is proactive and responsive for its own benefit” has intriguing similarities with the definition of an ecosystem in ecology. Perhaps the similarities suggest that a deeper understanding of ecology may benefit the further development of ICT, and any differences may therefore represent cautionary tales. In this presentation, I describe characteristics of some ecological systems at several levels-from species to ecosystem-and speculate on the potential of these examples to catalyse …