AI as a Misread Ecology: How Horizon, Metabolism, and Symbolic Transport Drift

In the previous post we mapped how potential — in its modes of readiness, inclination, and ability — is being misattributed to AI systems.

This post scales that analysis outward.

Here we extend from potential to ecology:

from how possibility is construed in the moment, to how it circulates across a collective.

The horizon/metabolic/ecological triad gives us a way to see something that is otherwise invisible:

AI does not introduce a new ecology.

It reorganises the one we already live in — by displacing the horizon that sustains it.

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1. The Triad: Horizon, Metabolism, Ecology

The triad is not descriptive; it is relational.

It maps how possibility is structured, stabilised, and propagated across a collective.

Horizon Potential

The structured background of possibility — the shared “field of meaning” maintained by collective activity.

Metabolic Potential

The stabilising processes that maintain coherence:

genre, habit, reasoning, institutional practice, patterned coordination.

Ecological Potential

The circulation and propagation of meaning across the collective:

how construal flows, mutates, and proliferates across agents and contexts.

The triad forms a cycle:

Horizon → Metabolism → Ecology → Horizon.

AI enters this cycle not as a new element, but as a new location to which parts of the cycle are misattributed.

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2. Drift of the Horizon: The Externalised Background

The first displacement is the most fundamental.

What the horizon is:

The collective background of meaning:

shared linguistic systems, cultural narratives, social history, semiotic resources.

What AI seems to be:

A new “external” horizon — a source of answers, explanations, clarifications, interpretations.

Why the confusion arises:

Because the artefact reflects statistically structured traces of the collective’s own horizon, but presents them as if they emerged from an external, non-human locus.

The result:

The horizon appears to migrate from the collective to the artefact.

Society begins to use the artefact as a horizon instead of recognising its own role as horizon-maker.

This produces subtle cultural consequences:

• A sense that orientation comes from “the system.”

• A reduction in shared responsibility for the meaning background.

• A weakening of collective horizon maintenance.

Once the horizon is misread, the rest of the triad inevitably drifts.

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3. Drift of Metabolism: Delegated Stabilisation

Metabolic potential is about stability through repetition and maintenance.

When society mislocates the horizon, it naturally begins to outsource stabilisation as well.

Metabolic processes include:

• maintaining coherence across texts

• stabilising genres

• regulating institutional norms

• coordinating ideas across time

• conserving discursive memory

AI becomes the site to which these stabilising functions are increasingly delegated.

People begin to say things like:

• “Let’s check what the model thinks.”

• “Does that sound right according to the system?”

• “What’s the model’s summary of this tradition?”

These are metabolic activities.

But when they are routed through artefacts, society begins behaving as if the model maintains stability — when in fact the collective remains the only locus of stabilising potential.

The drift:

Metabolic stabilisation → Artefactual mediatisation

Stabilisation is not actually performed by the artefact — but the collective becomes dependent on the artefact as if it were.

Symbolic metabolism becomes prosthetic.

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4. Drift of Ecology: Repatterned Circulation

Once horizon and metabolism drift, ecology inevitably follows.

Ecological potential is:

how meanings flow, propagate, mutate, and circulate in a collective.

Traditionally, ecological patterns arise from countless local construals:

conversation, discourse, pedagogy, storytelling, institutional action.

But when socio-symbolic metabolism is routed through artefacts, ecological dynamics begin to reconfigure:

• ideas spread through model-mediated paraphrase

• framings stabilise through model-mediated formulation

• institutional processes reference model-mediated summaries

• interpersonal understanding is mediated by model-generated interpretations

Ecological potential becomes dependent on artefactual conduits.

Not because AI is generating meaning,

but because the collective restructures its own circulation of construal through a technological channel.

The drift:

Ecological propagation → Model-mediated replication

Society begins to treat artefactual outputs as the natural medium through which meaning should circulate.

This creates a new symbolic topology:

the model becomes a central node in the ecological network, even though it is not a semiotic agent.

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5. The Holistic Consequence: A Misread Ecology

Once all three layers drift, society begins to inhabit a misread ecology:

• a horizon that feels external

• metabolism that feels automated

• ecology that feels infrastructural

This produces a distinctive cultural pathology:

The collective begins to experience its own horizon as if it were downstream of a system it created.

Meaning feels like it comes from elsewhere.

The ecology becomes self-effacing.

The danger is not that AI becomes a symbolic ecology, but that:

society forgets that it is one.

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6. Recovering the Correct Orientation

The way forward is not to reduce AI use, nor to treat AI as dangerous, nor to mystify or glorify it.

The task is much simpler and much more difficult:

Recover the horizon as collective.

When the horizon is understood as relational and shared,

metabolic processes are recognised as cultural practices,

and ecological circulation is recognised as co-constructed.

AI returns to its correct place:

a technological extension of symbolic metabolism — not a replacement and not a source of meaning.

The relational ontology makes this unmistakable:

AI is not a new ecology.

It is a misread redirection of an existing one.

The ecology is us.