We assume that since the human species’ earliest days of emergence, when all its members lived in the wild with all other species, the physiological needs and capabilities of the human infant have not changed significantly. That is, since the beginning of the species, the human infant has been not only totally helpless, it has always constituted a burden upon its mother or any other humans that felt compelled to sustain its life. An infant today cannot protect itself from the simplest of dangers and our assumption is that it has always been thus. For example, any number of other species, ranging from ants or other insects on the ground or in the bushes, to the major predators of the day (lions and tigers and bears; oh my!) are all threats to the human infant. The infant has virtually no defensive capabilities beyond the fact that, in most cases, its mother and father feel a natural compulsion to provide for their infant. While this results in a realization of the infant’s need to be carried and protected by larger humans, it also results in the inhibition of these humans’ ability to hunt for or gather food. The species has evolved mechanisms of grouping together for the enhanced protection and support of these individuals; very specifically the infants. However, the manner in which the design for these mechanisms is conveyed from generation to generation is still unclear. It does seem more than plausible that the conveyance mechanism does exist. Through the evolutionary process, the basic human group (the family) developed around the enhanced ability to protect the individual members of the group, beyond their individual capabilities to protect themselves, and to garner sufficient food for all the members of the group beyond what they were able to garner individually.

It seems most plausible that this earliest grouping formed around what today we know as the basic nuclear family; a man and a woman with a child or children. Of course, there is also documented evidence, for example in Australia’s outback, of larger family units in prehistoric settings. There, as the children grow, mate and have additional children, the family itself grows, perhaps with the result that it becomes multi-generational and perhaps even multi-familial. Similar social structures are still found preferentially in rural America, although their prevalence has diminished since the middle of the XX^th Century. While the basic family unit is arguably grounded in physiological principles derived from established evolutionary processes, large groupings involve enhanced communication and social skills on the part of members of the human species. This leads to the establishment of larger and more complex groups. We identify these larger groups as first, clans, then tribes and then very large-scale groups. We refer to the largest human groups as congregations and then as égalité. While we don’t have a firm history of this development, the existence of all such groups throughout recorded history is a strong indication that each revealed a successful evolutionary mechanism. That is, the emergence of groups certainly enhanced the survival characteristics of the individual; they enhanced the individual’s natural selection chances. Moreover, according to some researchers, such as David Sloan Wilson in Darwin’s Cathedral, a variety of indicators suggest that among-group selection is at work as well; that groups compete and that certain group characteristics enhance the natural selection chances of specific groups beyond that simply of the individuals within the groups.

In this case, the principles of natural selection are applied in a recursive fashion, thus giving rise to group-selection as well as individual-selection processes. With multi-level selection processes as the backdrop, our consideration of ecosystems must keep apace. Thus, we would like to consider the structure of ecosystems in which complex selection mechanisms for humans can function and then consider comparable ecosystems for computers and computer infrastructure, including an amalgam of the two. We characterize this extension of the basic concepts of an ecosystem as a social ecosystem. From time to time, throughout the remainder of this book, we may refer to the original concept of an ecosystem as a physical ecosystem in order to unambiguously differentiate it from a social ecosystem. If we use the word ecosystem alone, we are generally referring to a physical ecosystem.

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