The New Ecology of Digital Life

In Niele Maitis' story, the genius computer programmer and game designer had a powerful encounter with a redwood in the hills above Silicon Valley. Will we double down on the great migration into symbol space, our decampment into Facebook and Instagram and Netflix and the world of warcraft or will big data and deep learning allow us to grasp and rejoin the staggeringly complex processes of the living world? The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, they're inseparable aspects of the new ecology of digital life.