Nature - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 2

The machine view was so successful during the industrial revolution, we find it astonishingly
hard to let go, even as the information age renders it obsolete and counterproductive in a grow-
ing set of contexts. It's not that the old model is all wrong. We're not about to throw away hier-
archy or specialization. But our world is changing, and we must adjust.
The information age amplifies connectedness. Each wave of change - web, social, mobile, the In-
ternet of Things - increases the degree and import of connection and accelerates the rate of
change. In this context, it's vital to see our organizations as ecosystems. This is not meant figur-
atively. Our organizations are ecosystems, literally. And while each community of organisms
plus environment may function as a unit, the web of connections and consequences extends bey-
ond its borders.
All ecosystems are linked. To understand any complex, adaptive system, we must look outside
its limits. For instance, the story of Isle Royale is a lesson in systems thinking. In 1958, predic-
tions for the rise and fall of populations were grounded in classic predation theory: more moose,
more wolves, but more wolves, less moose, and less moose, less wolves, and so on. It's an inter-
esting, useful model, but it's incomplete.
Figure 1-1. The classic predator-prey relationship.
By 1969 the number of moose had doubled, a major shift in balance. By 1980 the moose popula-
tion had tripled, then declined by half, and the number of wolves had doubled. Ecologists
wondered whether the wolves might drive their prey to extinction. But two years later, the wolf
population had been decimated by canine parvovirus, a disease that was accidentally intro-
duced by a visitor who (illegally) brought his dog to the island.
Over the years, the moose population has grown steadily only to collapse due to cold winters,
hot summers, and outbreaks of moose tick. The tiny wolf population failed to thrive for years
due to inbreeding. But in the winter of 1997, a lone male wolf crossed an ice bridge between Isle
Royale and Canada, and revitalized the population for a while. Today, however, the wolves are
again at risk of extinction, and scientists fear that due to global warming, no more ice bridges
will form. ii
What's interesting for our purposes is that the surprises in this story result from exogenous
shocks. They come from outside the model of the system. In ecology and economics, such dis-