Challenging as it is, this article will try to look ahead to understand the Web's fundamental properties; see how they might create a new kind of information fabric in which learning, working, and playing co-mingle; examine the notion of distributed intelligence; ask how one might better capture and leverage naturally occurring knowledge assets; and finally get to our core topic-how all of this might fold together into a new concept of "learning ecology." Along the way, too, we'll look frequently at learning itself and ask not only how it occurs now, but how it can become ubiquitous in the future.