pubnix as an ecosystem   
============================

  $ dict ecosystem
  1 definition found
  
  From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
  
    ecosystem
        n 1: a system formed by the interaction of a community of
             organisms with their physical environment
  $

And what else is the pubnix-verse if not an ecosystem? 

The environment is not just physical but rather "philosophical": the
common ground established by the Unix habitat. The main activity of its
inhabitants consists of endless combinations of simple building blocks
into alchemic constructions of rare beauty, being them programs, phlogs,
discussions.

Each pubnix is a "patch" of that environment. A physical incarnation of
the same philosophy, where a small-ish community of humans share
resources, knowledge, software, ideas.  Although in principle
structurally identical to all the other ones, each patch in this
environment is unique and special, thanks to the unique interactions
among its inhabitants, their interests, and their actions/programs.
Those patches are often interconnected and intermingled, with several
dwellers having stable nests in more than one of them, acting in fact as
"bridges" across them.

Such an environment constitutes a "Small Internet" [1] not because
patches are physically close or adjacent, or because there can be only a
small number of them. The main reason why this kind of Internet is
inherently Small is that patches are not "connected" by cables and
wires, rather by their inhabitants and their relationships.  As in any
real ecosystem, each patch can physically sustain only a small number of
relations with other patches: links to too-far-away are inherently
difficult, due to the limited amount of resources and time of single
dwellers, and to the limited bandwidth of single "bridges".

The Small Internet can definitely "grow" [2], meaning that more patches
can be created and interconnected with the existing system. But its
growth would naturally be organic, since it is based on social bonds: in
the end, our human society has grown from several thousands individual
to several billions. Still, each human only really interacts with their
own "small community". 

The Small Internet is the digital incarnation of the social sphere we
really care about. 

As such, the Small Internet ougtha remain small. 

[1] gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0/~spring/phlog/2019-01-18__Small_Internet_Manifesto.txt
[2] gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0/~spring/phlog/2019-01-24__How_We_Should_Grow.txt