Abstract
This paper is an invitation to carry out science and engineering for a class of socio-technical systems where individuals — who may be human or artificial entities — engage in purposeful collective interactions within a shared web-mediated social space. We put forward a characterization of these systems and introduce some conceptual distinctions that may help to plot the work ahead. In particular, we propose a tripartite view (WIT Trinity) that highlights the interplay between the institutional models that prescribe the behaviour of participants, the corresponding implementation of these prescriptions and the actual performance of the system. Building on this tripartite view we explore the problem of developing a conceptual framework for modelling this type of systems and how that framework can be supported by technological artefacts that implement the resulting models. The last section of this position paper outlines a list of challenges that we believe are worth facing. This work draws upon the contributions that the MAS community has made to the understanding and realization of the concepts of coordination, norms and institutions from an organisational perspective.
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- 1.
We abuse the term “trinity” to stress the fact that every SCTS has these three views, that each of these views has several characteristic features but that the three views are interrelated in an indissoluble way in order to constitute the SCTS.
- 2.
Note that \(\mathcal {W}\) is not the entire real-world, it is only the fragment of the physical reality that affects and is affected by the SCTS. Thus, if we think of Amazon as an SCTS the \(\mathcal {W}\) (of Amazon) corresponds only to the reality around those online transactions that take place on line between a company call Amazon.com, buyers and sellers of books through the system that supports these transactions. In other words, there are events that happen in the word that may or may not be relevant for Amazon depending on what \(\mathcal {I}\) (of Amazon) stipulates, for instance; the real-world event “new dollar / euro exchange rate” is in \(\mathcal {W}\) (of Amazon) –or “meaningful” or relevant in Amazon–only if payments may be made in either of those two currencies. Likewise, a move in an online chess game is part of the game (is in \(\mathcal {W}\)), if and only if it is communicated and acknowledged through the on-line system (\(\mathcal {T}\)) and complies with the rules of chess defined in \(\mathcal {I}\) (it is a proper chess move and is made on time, for example).
- 3.
Recall Norman’s barrel. It is a water-tight cylinder with an intended affordance for holding liquids but it also provides affordances of a table or a hiding place. Similarly, the features we enumerate below have an intended affordance but others affordances may be achieved (for free) depending on the way they are specified or implemented.
- 4.
We adapt to SCTS the standard use of model as an abstract representation of a real entity and metamodel as the abstract representation of models. See for example this use in UML: “...[an abstract syntax that defines] modelling concepts, their attributes and their relationships, as well as the rules for combining these concepts to construct partial or complete ... models.” (superstructure version 2.2 (2009-02-03), p1).
- 5.
This point is aptly made in Jones et al. [16] (Step 1, Step 2. Phase 1, and Step 3) where they argue for a rigorous analysis of the expressiveness of the formalisms and their operationalisation, in order to arrive to a proper specification (C). We acknowledge that those same issues — as well as the computational considerations of their Step 2, Phase2 — are all present in the “top-down” design and the choice of the metamodel.
- 6.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the support of SINTELNET (FET Open Coordinated Action FP7-ICT-2009-C Project No. 286370) in the writing of this paper. In addition, d’Inverno acknowledges the support of the FP7 Technology Enhanced Learning Program Project: Practice and Performance Analysis Inspiring Social Education (PRAISE).
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Noriega, P., Padget, J., Verhagen, H., d’Inverno, M. (2015). Towards a Framework for Socio-Cognitive Technical Systems. In: Ghose, A., Oren, N., Telang, P., Thangarajah, J. (eds) Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems X. COIN 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9372. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25420-3_11
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