What's alive?
A Berkeley professor recommended that I read “Self-Producing Systems: Implications and Applications of Autopoiesis” by John Mingers.
Basically, an autopoietic system is a “dynamic network of interacting processes of production” that is contained within a boundary and also produces that boundary — where the boundary is “maintained by the preferential interactions of its components.” So you're looking for something that produces its own components and whose components in turn create its own boundaries. This concept helps us understand life.
If all autopoietic systems are the same as “living” systems, then we'd have to say that online communities/societies are ”alive.” They have components that are engaged in dynamic, interacting processes; they have boundaries that those components create (membership, activities); their boundaries are maintained by the preferences of their members. A community, offline or online, creates itself.
Or you could say that some autopoietic systems are alive (like cells) and some (like computer networks) are not. Or, finally, you could say that only physical living systems are autopoietic — which seems wrong. It seems to me that the first choice (all autopoietic systems are “alive”) is the strongest.
Autopoietic systems aren't closed — indeed, they can't be, because they need energy flows (like new members) to do the work of creating themselves. Wikipedia is an autopoietic system, arguably. And it has a great entry on autopoiesis.
Yes, this is a little far-flung — a “right to life” for online self-created systems. But instead of always prioritizing the economics of infrastructure companies, we might want to look at the value (the liveliness) of what's going on online.
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