I sometimes hear the word ecosystems used to describe software or business systems, and my first thought is that this is a corruption of something beautiful, like saying a tyrant is like god. But this is not a very generous thought. The truth is, the more we think we know what ecosystems are the more we realize we don’t know what they are.
Like the word triangle, the word ecosystem describes a thing with certain characteristics but with a lot of room for variety. A triangle certainly consists of three sides and three angles, but nonetheless there are an infinite number of different triangles. Or, like a color, which might appear quite differently from one person to the next, ecosystems are as much in the mind of the beholder as they are out there to be perceived by our senses.
So entrepreneurs and software engineers describe their domains as ecosystems, presumably because they have lots of different parts that coexist together. Like the different creatures sharing the same niche, they don’t interfere with each other as they do what they have to do.
The word ecosystems gives us a vague sense of the cycles of life and death or growth and decay in nature. So, the parts function and endure for awhile, and when they become obsolete, version 2.0 appears like mushrooms blossoming out of the decay. Similarly, when businesses fail, new business models grow out of the mistakes that cost them their lives.
This is all very ecosystem-like, but we must keep in mind that these ecosystems are part of the human landscape, and as such they are fundamentally flawed. They are ecosystems of competition and fear.
Rather, the ecosystems toward which we must strive are cooperative. Instead of owning matter and fearing that someone will take it, we shall be possessed by qualia which we can share without diminishment. True ecosystems never stop giving. In death, even life is still giving, and out of death comes new life.