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4
Desert Storm on the Network:
Ecology of Readers

In the fall the war was always there, but
we did not go to it any more.

—Ernest Hemingway,
"In Another Country"

Introduction
In the last two chapters, we saw how ecologies of writers, readers, and texts evolve through interdependent activities as agents work to coordinate their internal structures with external structures in their environment and with each other. Though not without its difficulties, this process of emergent self-organization seems generally benevolent. So we might wonder how such a complex adaptive system manages conflict. In particular, we might raise some specific questions about conflict in an ecological system of writers, readers, and texts:
• How is conflict perceived and framed in the system? That is, in what ways does the conflict reflect the distributed, embodied, emergent, and enactive properties of the system?
• What "meaning" does the conflict have for the system?
• What changes influence the system, and what changes are originated by the system to respond to conflict?
• What effect does conflict have on the ongoing processes of the system?
• What mechanisms does the system evolve to contain, mediate, displace, reduce, or banish the conflict?
• If the conflict is resolved, how is the resolution effected? If it is not resolved, what effect does it have on the structure of the system?
• How does the conflict serve or stress the self-organizing properties of the system?
• How does the system incorporate the history of the conflict into its dynamic structure?

-126-

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Publication Information: Book Title: The Wealth of Reality: An Ecology of Composition. Contributors: Margaret A. Syverson - author. Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press. Place of Publication: Carbondale, IL. Publication Year: 1999. Page Number: 126.
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