An Essay on Lifespan Development from the Perspective of In- formation Ecology

Introduction Human ontogeny may be viewed as a course of transitions through informational states. This paper is an attempt to model the informational niches through which some individuals pass in American society. The individual modeled is an essentialized European American middle-class male energy producer. The framework adopted is based predominately on social psychological principles as applied to the domain of lifespan development. However, the perspectives of social psychology are here merged with the nascent field of information ecology. The specific transactions that occur between individuals and the larger social matrix here modeled are informational in nature (demarcations of status, symbolic interactionism, educational manipulation of ideological states, socially negotiated concepts of self, etc.). Also, some key concepts from information ecology are applied as explicative of human ontogeny and the development of the social self.