The Fungal Internet
Long before ARPANET or TCP/IP, the forest floor developed a distributed information network. The Wood-Wide Web reveals that forests are not collections of solitary individuals fighting for sunlight, but cooperative communities linked by mycorrhizal fungi.
This network allows for interspecies communication and resource balancing. A "Mother Tree" (an old-growth hub) can pump carbon to shaded seedlings that would otherwise die. A tree under aphid attack can signal its neighbors to raise their chemical defenses.
Infrastructure as Mutual Aid
In the Myceloom framework, the Wood-Wide Web serves as the primary metaphor for Web4 infrastructure. Unlike the extractive Web 2.0 (where value is harvested) or the hyper-financialized Web3 (where every interaction is a transaction), the Wood-Wide Web operates on a logic of mutual aid and radical redundancy.
The network survives because it benefits all participants. The fungus cannot make its own food (sugar), which the tree provides via photosynthesis. The tree cannot easily access phosphorus and nitrogen, which the fungus dissolves from soil and transports. This is not altruism; it is evolved structural necessity.
The Warning Signal
Just as the forest network transmits warnings about threats (droughts, beetles), a resilient digital infrastructure must have built-in signaling for systemic risks. In a Myceloom-based web, "epistemic crises" or "collapsed links" would be treated like forest fires—signals propagated instantly to prevent contagion and trigger repair.