Social Informatics and Cyber Commons in Computational
Analysis
Toshizumi Ohta, Kazunari Ishida, Isamu Okada, Hitoshi Yamamoto
ohta@is.uec.ac.jp, mactwist@oak.dti.ne.jp, okada@s.soka.ac.jp, hitoshi@rs.kagu.sut.ac.jp
We discuss social informatics as an emerging discipline, and
explore the role of cyber commons in organizing and the application of computational
analysis to study it. Social Informatics (http://si.ohta.is.uec.ac.jp/) is
an interdisciplinary study to explore a function of information in a social
system, and to design a system for information exchange in a society. The
social informatics aims to promote welfare of human beings in a society.
Cyber commons are emerging in the Internet age as repositories
for the generation, accumulation, and distribution of information and knowledge
to benefit societies. In this new age, we can characterize societies in which
a paradigm is changing to an auto-genesis or self-genesis from an allo-genesis
or other-genesis.
Within the context of such a characterization, cyber commons
are an aspect of social informatics that concerns the arrangement of information
space in a society. Two questions that need to be addressed are how cyber
commons differ from traditional commons, and how they can be fostered and
utilized. To answer these questions, we discuss properties of cyber commons
in contrast with those of traditional commons, and provide and explain simulation
results we obtained with respect to this topic. Based on these answers, we
explore the role of cyber commons in this new age, and discuss a new form
of organizing employing examples concerning a virtual organization, an intermediary
of information and knowledge exchanges, and social dilemma problems.
Results of our computational analysis concerning the cyber commons
reveal that emergent properties can be observed in our model, and that alternative
hypotheses are explored with respect to the properties of cyber commons.
We conclude that virtuality, viability, and visibility have
to be fostered to provide benefits to coming societies, and that the concept
of operational organization must be a promising approach to understanding
the societies.