14 The New Ecology
sectors, as in the case of Microsoft which sought to make its Office
software available on as many platforms as possible when its Windows
Mobile operating system collapsed – the more prevalent tendency of the
past ten years has been to lock users into proprietary systems. The most
successful company in this regard is Apple which, in terms of mobile
considered from the vantage of profitability, is far ahead of the competition. Yet even the much-vaunted openness of Google’s Android platform
still seeks to establish other Google services such as search and maps as
primary for users, while Amazon is ruthless in its attempts to hook all
users onto itself as the main gateway into a vast range of commercial and
entertainment opportunities.
When discussing digital ecosystems, the technology and business
press tends not to consider the phrase in terms of complex, large-scale
technology systems which, theoretically at least, are open-ended and
capable of evolving far beyond the plans of those who establish them.
Instead, there is a tendency on the part of journalists to accept the definitions offered by the big tech companies themselves and treat platforms
as a series of increasingly closed, proprietary systems. Thus, for example, Michelle Evans at Forbes can argue that integration between things
such as iOS, the iPhone X, Apple Watch, and Apple Pay is transforming
digital commerce (all the time keeping consumers within the Apple ecosystem), while John Thornhill observes that iOS can provide an important hub between a huge variety of “digital capitalism” services such as
Uber and AirBnB;
13
and yet, as Antonia Villas-Boas observes in the
kind of article that has almost become a trope in recent years, “leaving
the Apple ecosystem can be a tough thing to do”
14
– intentionally so. If
Web 2.0 was intended, among other things, to break down the walled
garden between producers and consumers, the Big Five have devoted a
great deal of time and effort wherever possible to rebuilding those walls,
tempting users to return to a carefully regulated Eden where everything
“just works”.
As such, this chapter tends to distinguish between digital ecosystems
and media ecologies. This is not that the digital ecosystem is not a useful
concept – it is – but that its increasingly prevailing use with regard to big
tech tends to allow Google, Apple, Amazon, and others to define it in the
more restrictive sense rather than as a true ecosystem; by the latter, this
book means a system that considers the operations of such companies
within a much wider context of interactions between a plurality of structures, economics, regulatory frameworks, organisations, and people. In
many ways, the tension is between an assumption that, with enough
data, any system can be perfectly determined versus the notion that any
ecological system is always inherently complex. The development of
complexity theory from the 1990s onwards deals with nonlinear systems
capable of exhibiting emergent, self-organised and adaptive behaviour.
15
Such theory is especially suited to the concepts of digital ecosystems
sectors, as in the case of Microsoft which sought to make its Office
software available on as many platforms as possible when its Windows
Mobile operating system collapsed – the more prevalent tendency of the
past ten years has been to lock users into proprietary systems. The most
successful company in this regard is Apple which, in terms of mobile
considered from the vantage of profitability, is far ahead of the competition. Yet even the much-vaunted openness of Google’s Android platform
still seeks to establish other Google services such as search and maps as
primary for users, while Amazon is ruthless in its attempts to hook all
users onto itself as the main gateway into a vast range of commercial and
entertainment opportunities.
When discussing digital ecosystems, the technology and business
press tends not to consider the phrase in terms of complex, large-scale
technology systems which, theoretically at least, are open-ended and
capable of evolving far beyond the plans of those who establish them.
Instead, there is a tendency on the part of journalists to accept the definitions offered by the big tech companies themselves and treat platforms
as a series of increasingly closed, proprietary systems. Thus, for example, Michelle Evans at Forbes can argue that integration between things
such as iOS, the iPhone X, Apple Watch, and Apple Pay is transforming
digital commerce (all the time keeping consumers within the Apple ecosystem), while John Thornhill observes that iOS can provide an important hub between a huge variety of “digital capitalism” services such as
Uber and AirBnB;
13
and yet, as Antonia Villas-Boas observes in the
kind of article that has almost become a trope in recent years, “leaving
the Apple ecosystem can be a tough thing to do”
14
– intentionally so. If
Web 2.0 was intended, among other things, to break down the walled
garden between producers and consumers, the Big Five have devoted a
great deal of time and effort wherever possible to rebuilding those walls,
tempting users to return to a carefully regulated Eden where everything
“just works”.
As such, this chapter tends to distinguish between digital ecosystems
and media ecologies. This is not that the digital ecosystem is not a useful
concept – it is – but that its increasingly prevailing use with regard to big
tech tends to allow Google, Apple, Amazon, and others to define it in the
more restrictive sense rather than as a true ecosystem; by the latter, this
book means a system that considers the operations of such companies
within a much wider context of interactions between a plurality of structures, economics, regulatory frameworks, organisations, and people. In
many ways, the tension is between an assumption that, with enough
data, any system can be perfectly determined versus the notion that any
ecological system is always inherently complex. The development of
complexity theory from the 1990s onwards deals with nonlinear systems
capable of exhibiting emergent, self-organised and adaptive behaviour.
15
Such theory is especially suited to the concepts of digital ecosystems