Well, everyone has to live within the environment they find themselves in; the "artificial" ecosystem is just another kind of ecosystem, and people look for nic

Well, everyone has to live within the environment they find themselves in; the "artificial" ecosystem is just another kind of ecosystem, and people look for niches within it. And it's true that there are plenty of lifestyles that would have to be different in a different ecosystem. But that's true of a wide range of niches you could inhabit. Someone who's spending their full-time efforts building a social music player is in a way piggy-backing off a whole bunch of other stuff that already exists and is providing their food/shelter/medicine/etc. You can't exactly eat social-music systems, so it's only possible to have the luxury of working on them if someone else is providing your material needs. Is that being a "parasite"? Well, the way the economy is currently set up, they can carve out a niche where they can survive doing it. But then, so can the street kids, just on different terms...