Nature and Virtual Space
A farm of only one single crop type does not occur naturally. This kind of farm, especially when packed together, theoretically produces fruitful returns of the crop. Practically, the result of this monoculture could be catastrophic crop failure where pests targeted this single crop type. Other possible bad effects include soil erosion and habitat disruption. In forestry, monoculture refers to the planting of one species of tree. Even though monoculture naturally occurs in forestry, the trees are not of the same age, height, but rather some dead some taller, which contributes a balanced habitat for wildlife. A forest of trees with the same age, height is unnatural for wildlife and is susceptible to adverse environmental conditions or pests. For some of the above problems, man have become very skilful in agriculture, and introduced chemicals for dealing with such pests.
Chemicals are not perfect, and could possibly kill the crops or just fail to kill the pests or even kill the humans consuming the crop. All in all, the problem is a result of monoculture.
That’s monoculture in nature. How about monoculture in our virtual space?
Windows. Do you still remember when our computers are affected in large scales? The memories of when you plug your LAN cables into your hostels you get infected immediately. With such prevalence and strong compatibility between different versions, and the lack of self-defense capabilities of users, malicious users will take advantage of this cascading failure. It is truly disastrous when the pest ( malware ) appears, as we have witnessed Blaster. This goes the same for web apps in the case of Samy worm.
Instant Messaging. Do you still remember when you are infecting all your friends on your list and warning them “DON’T OPEN ANY FILES FROM ME!”? I bet this is not new stuff. We are susceptible to infection precisely because we are the same crop type and have little defense available, and the defense does not work too well.
At first thought, I would not think nature and virtual space are related. But now, they are not quite unrelated now. Will nature show us any revelations?
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