Information Ecology

Information ecology focuses on the environmental impacts of the digital economy in the information age. The key questions to be addressed in information ecology are as follows. To what extent will information technology help improve the environment? Will information eventually substitute for materials and energy as the dominant commodity in the digital economy? What are the deeper connections between information flows and material and energy flows? From a broader perspective, information ecology should be regarded as an expansion of geography's human–environment interaction tradition in the age of ubiquitous computing and instantaneous communication.

Methodologically, information ecology is an off-spring of industrial ecology, which focuses on the design and development of industrial manufacturing systems based on the principles and laws found in the ecosystems. Life cycle analysis for specific sectors and input–output analysis for given regions are two commonly used methodologies in information ecology.

The discussion of the interchangeability between information and energy is not a new topic; it can be traced back at least to Maxwell's Demon problem in physics during the late 19th century. Maxwell's Demon challenges the second law of thermodynamics by claiming that information is able to generate free energy starting from a state of maximum entropy. The problem has been approached primarily from three disciplines: physics (e.g., idealized models of our physical environment), engineering (e.g., descriptions of machines dedicated to particular tasks), and economics (e.g., national accounts and models of production and consumption).

In 1993, Daniel Spreng argued that the interchangeability among energy, time, and information can be observed in several instances in physics, engineering, and economics. He also argued that new information technology can be used to substitute time and energy to improve the quality of life without adding stress to the environment. In 1994, Xavier Chen contended that information could replace traditional production factors, such as capital, raw materials, and energy, via its embeddedness into the production factors and its combinations with them.

However, neoclassical economic theory is not capable of modeling information within its traditional framework. According to this theory, a production factor has four intrinsic properties: divisibility, substitutability by other factors, complementarity with other factors, and independence vis-à-vis the other factors. Nonmaterial information, on the other hand, is independent of any of these four properties. It is neither additive nor divisible, and it is neither easily quantifiable nor exhaustible. These characteristics of information make it difficult for scholars to analyze the interchangeability between information and other production factors in the context of traditional neoclassical economic theory.

Information ecology should be an integral component of the geography of the information society. Recent empirical studies have shown that the environmental implications of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are complex. On the one hand, it has been shown that innovations in ICTs have several effects—dematerialization, decarbonization, and demobilization—on society, thereby saving energy, reducing emissions, and promoting sustainable[Page 258] development. On the other hand, new ICTs were also shown to play a major role in stimulating new rounds of global consumption, thereby increasing demands for both materials and energy—widely known as the rebound effects. The net effects of ICTs on the environment are uncertain. Information ecology is still in its infancy, and much more interdisciplinary research is needed.

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