STPDE: Future applications

The socio-technical properties of digital environments as a defined measurable and verifiable goal

Learning from the AlphaGo

In March 2016, AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol in a five-game match, continuing the long tradition of machines learning from, competing and surpassing humans. Is it about time for humans to learn from "computers and networks" and, more particularly, computer and network mediated environments, hence, digital environments

Digital environments

A digital ecosystem is a distributed, adaptive, open socio-technical system with properties of self-organisation, scalability and sustainability inspired from natural ecosystems. Digital ecosystem models are informed by knowledge of natural ecosystems, especially for aspects related to competition and collaboration among diverse entities.

Our goal

How to better understand the underlying technical and social factors that underpin individual and organizational behaviors in the field of digital environments? If all indicators are modular and variable, how scientific-solid grounds could be used to anticipate future of the Internet and other related digital trends? What are the socio-technical properties of digital environments? How can they be rethought and reused in everyday life activities? What are their future applications for business, cooperatives, entrepreneurs?

We propose (five) 5 key invariant socio-technical indicators enabling qualitative and quantitative assessments of past, present and future trends in digital environments. Our challenge is to overpass the state of intuitive guess, through complexity management approaches, no matter if it's top-down (with mixing theoretical experts and grass-root activists) or bottom-up (with application of wisdom of crowds). We propose to assess whether digital environments possess properties, somehow like water do possess properties (freezing at 0 C°, evaporating at 100 C°).

State of the art

The digital ecosystem metaphor and models have been applied to a number of business areas related to the production and distribution of knowledge-intensive products and services, including higher education (Damiani 2007). The perspective of this research is providing methods and tools to achieve a set of objectives of the ecosystem (e.g. sustainability, fairness, bounded information asymmetry, risk control and gracious failure). These objectives are seen as desirable properties whose emergence should be fostered by the digital ecosystem self-organization, rather than as explicit design goals like in conventional IT.

McLuhan and Quentin Fiore further claimed that it is the media of the epoch that defines the essence of the society, which correspond to the dominant mode of communication of the time respectively. To understand how media effect large structural changes in human outlook, McLuhan classified media as either 'hot' or 'cool'. Hot media refer to a high-definition communication that demand little involvement from the audience and concentrate on one sensory organ at a time. This type of media requires no interpretation because it gives all the information necessary to comprehend. Some examples of hot media include radio, books, and lectures. cool media describe media that demand active involvement from audience. Cool media require the audience to be active and fill in information by mentally participating. This is multi-sensory participation. Some examples of cool media are TV, seminars, and cartoons.

Eye: left hemisphere (hot) controls right side of the body; visual; speech; verbal; analytical; mathematical; linear; detailed; sequential; controlled; intellectual; dominant worldly;quantitative; active; sequential ordering

Ear: right hemisphere (cool) controls the left side of the body; spatial; musical; acoustic; holistic; artistic; symbolic; simultaneous; emotional; creative; minor; spiritual; qualitative; receptive; synthetic; gestalt; facial recognition; simultaneous comprehension; perception of abstract patterns

Submitter's role: coordination

Ynternet.org scientific committee is gathering renown experts with result-oriented successful micro-entrepreneurs, all experienced on managing societal transitions for your public or private organization. Our reason to be is described in one single key word : netizenship, alias citizenship on the net. We can co-design and co-garden working groups with the right people in key communities of the emerging Netizen culture. We can manage partnerships with local as well as worlwide leaders of successful projects and movements. Some symbols : GNU/Linux, Firefox, CreativeCommons, Wikipedia. But also projects on Netsafety, eLearning, FreeHardware DYI movements, alternative currency webprojects, MOOCs.