The Twin Peaks of Interoperability and Generativity

Enterprise Interoperability, 2007

Successful interoperability of systems requires a sound basis for activity across levels and up to the highest global level. The interoperability is non-local and subject to the conditions of naturality found in reality. The axiomatic models over the last two centuries can guarantee no reliability at higher levels. Category theory is free from these twin problems and can therefore offer a theoretical basis on which to base standards for interoperability. Four levels are used to give closure for policy, organisation, instantiation, naming, classification and meta and metameta relationships. Such constructions provide facilities for relating arrows in general, both descriptive and manipulative, including the specification of constraints and a calculus. The implications for standards are discussed. c c c

2004

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Throughout this book, it has been clearly articulated that the emergence and use of schemas and standards are increasingly important to the effective functioning of research networks. However, what is also equally emphasised is the danger posed if the use of schemas and standards results in excessive and negative system constraints-a means of exerting unhelpful control over distributed research activities. However, how realistically can a balance be facilitated between the positive benefits derived in the course of centralised coordination through the use standards versus the benefits from allowing self-organisation and emergence to prevail at the edge of organisational networks? In this chapter, we set out to explore how differing approaches to such problems are actually finding expression in the world. To do this, we have engaged in a detailed comparison of three different transformation systems, including the CGML system discussed at length in the previous chapter. We caution against any premature standardisation on any system due to externalities associated with, for example, the semantic web itself.

To sustain is to endure' -that is, to be able to survive and continue to function in the face of significant changes. The commonly accepted concept of 'sustainability' currently encompasses three main pillars: environmental, social/ethical and economic. In a metaphor of survival, they can be seen as water, food and air; one needs all three, only with varying degrees of urgency. In today's globally networked environment, it is becoming obvious that one cannot achieve environmental, social or economic sustainability of any artefact (be it physical or virtual, e.g. enterprise, project, information system, policy, etc) without achieving ubiquitous ability of the artefact and its creators and users to exchange and understand shared information and if necessary perform processes on behalf of each other -capabilities that are usually defined as 'interoperability'. Thus, sustainability relies on interoperability, while, conversely, interoperability as an ongoing concern relies for its existence on all three main pillars of sustainability. This paper aims to test the hypothesis that interoperability and sustainability are two inseparable and inherently linked aspects of any universe of discourse. To achieve this, it applies the dualistic sustainability / interoperability viewpoint to a variety of areas (manufacturing, healthcare, information and communication technology and standardisation), analyses the results and synthesizes conclusions and guidelines for future work.

Páginas a&b Arquivos & Bibliotecas, 2022

This article concerns the path taken during my scientific research related to the construction and management of digital assets for the design, development, and management of databases, within the scope of the INET-md in Portugal. Its general objective is to facilitate the interoperability, Web dissemination, search, and retrieval of the INET-md's digital collections. This investigation aims to reinforce the alliance between the areas of Information Science and Computer Science. From the Information Science, it brings the applications used for organization, management, and publication of digital assets collections on the Web; and from the Computer Science, it brings syntactic concepts (metadata and protocols) to communicate and exchange data and semantic concepts (ontologies and semantic annotations) to describe data. Both types of concepts can promote interoperability between distinct digital repositories and platforms, providing improvements in information search and retrieval activities.

2004

Abstract Information Society Technologies (ISTs) are rapidly becoming part of a new backbone for society, and are characterized by techno-diversity. The e-Europe Action Plan targets a transformation of a wide range of social interactions characterized by socio-diversity. Both techno-diversity and socio-diversity contribute to acceptance problems for project results. This paper explores the role of conceptual models as mediating artefacts of society-wide services for sustained and multiplicative acceptance.

Scientific discourse refers to triads as conceptual structures whose purpose is to emphasize the connection between concepts included in the description of a certain phenomenon. The famous Popper’s triad is comprised of the world of physical objects and processes (World 1), the world of mental objects, i.e. subjective human experience (World 2) and the world of objective knowledge (World 3), which can be thought of as all the products of thought – the world of information, knowledge, scientific theories, literature, etc. During the past half-century, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and new media began to change our reality on all three levels. Using a comparative analysis, this paper will examine the impact ICT and new media have on the Popper’s World 1, 2 and 3. As it will be shown, the modern age offers a new conceptual triad the aim of which is not to stand against the Popper’s triad but to introduce new integral elements that intersect and interact with it. In this new triad the world of physical objects is being replaced by the world of virtual reality (i.e. the Virtual World), the world of mental objects is replaced by transmental objects (i.e. the Transmental World) and the world of objective knowledge is being replaced by the world of digitized data/information/ knowledge in the context of developing AI (i.e. the Digital World). These new architectonic elements build new conceptual structure the aim of which is to define, describe and represent new interrelated concepts essential for better understanding of today’s totality of reality. They form new ontology of the world which describes reality as inseparable from the concepts of information and technology.

MA Thesis, 2002

Interoperability is a concept that indicates intended collaboration between people, companies or institutions, and the parties involved know they must share a spoken language to collaborate and benefit from the facility. As computers have become the precondition of this interchange of information, the need for a joint software language is obvious and equally requested to achieve interoperability. 1 Different companies and different people have different information, products and services to share or exchange with others. Museums have collections of physical objects and collections of information on these objects. Recent computer technology has made it possible to photograph, reproduce and distribute the physical collections digitally and eventually make them available world-wide on the Internet. In principle it makes any information on a museum object available to anybody on a single web page or database sheet. It provides links with immediate access to relevant information on a computer in the room next door or in a museum on the other side of the world. The computer facilitated interchange of information has not replaced the experience of the original object. Instead -according to the quality of the registration, the photographic presentation and the professional interpretation -it facilitates planning and preliminary studies in wider perspectives. It gives wider access for more people to more collections and information. It is a tool for database management systems and it forms the basis for virtual exhibitions at differentiated levels. These comprehensive possibilities show at the same time the means of interoperability and what interoperability is good for. 1 A thorough definition is provided by ASHBY HELEN, McKENNA GORDON and STIFF MATTHEW ed.; Spectrum Knowledge, Standards for cultural information management; p.63-65, mda Cambridge 2001 See also STIFF MATTHEW; Managing New Technology Projects in Museums and Galleries; p.70, mda 2002. 4 Introduction: The gap between ideal and real. Since 1997 the British Labour Government has paid much attention to the educational role of the cultural institutions in the United Kingdom and their ability to propagate knowledge to the public. 2 The Government has established an agency of cultural organisations with the purpose of collaborating on issues of mutual interest such as public access to collections via the Internet, and it recognizes the opportunities of interoperability by emphasizing application of certain registration standards. Talking of museums, interoperability and the exchange of information the dissertation has as its main concern the recognition of "knowledge" as a valuable acquisition. This is so, because of the power of the information being exchanged on the Internet in general, and because of the role of interpretation implied in communicating museum topics in particular. It is my impression that, in spite of the fact that knowledge is a powerful source, its role in museum communication has been underestimated, and consequently the general opinion of what interoperability is good for has been inconsistent. I shall argue that it can be otherwise, and that the good of interoperability to a great extend depends on what you do; not only what you can do, but more so what you choose to do. In his proceeding at the 2 nd Museum Documentation Association Conference in Cambridge in 1988 the former head of the Department of Museum Studies in Berlin, Christof Wolters commented on what he thought to be an inconsistency or a gap between the idea from museum professionals of international exchange of data, and the actual ways of registering their objects in museums. 3 Wolters described how the belief in worldwide documentation standards arose at conferences, while homemade registration systems were the result of daily life in museums. He then drew attention to different perceptions of the meaning of words used for categorizing objects.

Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, 2009

This article describes the five facets of the interoperability ecosystem and offers insight into a constructive role for government in facilitating each aspect individually, as well as in promoting the interoperability ecosystem as a whole. The five facets of an "interoperability ecosystem" are: (1) technical interoperability (which is generally product-focused, i.e., designing products to be interoperable off the shelf or with the use of translators or converters); (2) organizational interoperability (focusing on business processes and user-based adoption issues to facilitate efficiencies across organizations); (3) legal/public policy interoperability (i.e., laws and public policies affecting interoperability among government entities and organizations, such as accessibility, privacy, security, etc.); (4) semantic interoperability (i.e., assurance that all systems and users "speak the same language" and understand each other); and (5) the effect of differing political, economic, cultural and social forces upon interoperability. The article concludes, among other things, that as the IT industry evolves, there is an unprecedented level of technical interoperability in the IT industry today that has been achieved by the marketplace in a number of complementary ways, and consequently, government's intervention should be extremely limited. In fact, governmental attempts to mandate technical standards and to prefer a certain Stacy A. Baird is a Visiting Fellow in the East Asian International Economic Law and Policy Program, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong. Mr. Baird would like to thank Jeffrey Peng Jun-lei, student in the Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong, for his assistance and contribution. This article is based on Mr. Baird's presentation, "Government Role in Developing an Interoperability Ecosystem," for ICEGOV2007,