Social Networking and Ecosystem Collapse
I recently spent a week scuba diving in the Florida Keys with my son’s Boy Scout troop, working with the Coral Restoration Foundation to transplant healthy coral from their nursery to ocean reefs. The work was extremely rewarding. The scouts not only did a very meaningful (and fun) service project, but also learned a great deal about the issues affecting coral reefs and the role of the reef in the overall ecosystem in the Keys, and how the learnings from that apply to the health of our social networks as well.
Coral health and Ecosystem health
One of the key learnings was how the health of the coral reef affects the health of the whole ecosystem in the Keys. The reefs provide a home for fish, control erosion, help break waves, and many other benefits. When the reef dies, the entire ecosystem is affected.
The characteristic of a healthy coral reef is the complexity of the reef itself. A reef ideally is a complex multi-dimensional world, with a large collection of different types of coral, fish, plants, and other structures. An unhealthy reef lacks these things, and eventually becomes an indiscriminate mass without any structure of variation.
Look at this image, showing the collapse of a reef in just ten years. The original image is full of complexity and life. The new image is…
