SLIS doctoral student Guo Zhang presented a paper at the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES). The conference was held from November 21-23, 2011 in San Francisco, California.
The paper, co-authored with SLIS faculty member Dr. Elin Jacob, is titled “Places for Digital Ecosystems, Digital Ecosystems in Places” and was published in 2011 by the ACM Press.
- Abstract:
- In this paper we refined the definitions of "cyberspace" and "digital ecosystem" and considered their interrelations based on a four-dimensional approach to the concepts of space and place. In our examination of cyberspace, we reject the idea that cyberspace is simply a "space" and conclude, instead, that "cyberspace" is a spatial metaphor for the familiar places in the digital environment that have become, for many, such an essential part of everyday life. And we contend that a “digital ecosystem” is neither a synonym for either cyberspace or a digital environment nor an abstraction of certain features of such environments. Rather, "cyberspace" and "digital ecosystem" are independent but interrelated and mutually complementary concepts. Indeed, it is this complementary relationship that leads to their intertwined definitions: Cyberspace constitutes the places of digital ecosystems, while digital ecosystems function as the place-like units of cyberspace.
Posted December 07, 2011