“Web Ecology studies the relationship of the nature of data and the behavior of actors on the internet.

Our field poses two simple questions to researchers:

• ‘Where have studies about the web failed?’ and,
• ‘How can we do better?’ “ 

This manifesto declares the principles of our new academic approach to studying the web, and it makes me horny. It’s up on my wall, like a poster of Hendrix. 

To me, the sexiest of the nine principles listed are “comprehensiveness” and “experimental.” The former is intrinsically counter to the modern mode of academia, which seeks to specialize scholars until their particular research no longer has relevance to a layperson. Yet, at the core of everything I do is an undying craving to understand how the world and its people work and move. Academia promises to teach, but instead it narrows one’s vision so that greater learning and questioning is inhibited.

The latter just acknowledges what everyone enacts: that life resembles a game. We are as competitive in our lives as we are at sports or Magic the Gathering (yes, I just bust that out with a straight face. EAT IT). Experimental, to me, means excitement and openness of possibility. Inherent in every question, every “what if…?”, is an unwillingness to settle for mundane or expected. Kicking up dirt, seeing what you can find or create - that’s the true stuff of life.  

If you are wondering why this is tagged as part of my portfolio, it is because I am a part of this nascent movement, and contributed to the drafting of this statement.