Group items tagged

11. How is ontology different from object-oriented modeling? An ontology is different from object-oriented modeling (represented in UML) in several ways. First, the most profound difference is that the ontology technology is theoretically found on logic. While ontology allows automated reasoning or infer ence, object-oriented modeling does not. Another difference is the treatment of properties; while the ontology technology treats properties as the first-class citizen, the object-oriented modeling does not. That is, while the ontology technology allows inheritance of properties, the object-oriented modeling does not. While the ontology technology allows arbitrary user-defined relationships among classes (a type property), the object-oriented modeling limits the relationship types to the subclass-superclass hierarchical relationship. While the ontology technology allows adding properties to relationships such as symmetry, transitivity, and inversion so that they are used in reasoning, the object-oriented modeling does not. While the ontology technology allows multiple inheritances among classes and also among properties, the object-oriented modeling allows only single inheritances. Despite theses differences, object-oriented modeling and UML are accepted as a practical ontology specification, mostly because of their wide-spread use in industry and the multitude of existing models in UML. There is an on-going effort to add logic capability to object-oriented modeling, represented by OCL (Object Constraint Language).

daviding says: To improve our understanding of the science of service systems, I think that we need to get to the level of ontology vocabulary ... and probably no higher. SysML has features that UML doesn't ... which doesn't mean good or bad, just different.

daviding says: Although the title says "price", informal ties reduce the cost of client interactions because the effort to transfer information on complex issues is lower.

... they modeled three features: how firms' prices changed with respect to the number of embedded ties they had with clients; the number of the firm's attorneys who sat on the boards of other corporations; and the status of the firm as perceived by peers. The greater the proportion of informal relationships and unwritten arrangements a firm enjoyed with clients, the lower the fee the firm typically charged for complex legal work. Such ties promote clearer understanding of client needs and preferences and lessen the need for rigid oversight structures, allowing for more efficient and timely operation, thus requiring less billable time from a firm. Said one partner: "It's no question that trust enters into [pricing]. I mean, it's very rare that you're going to get the big $500 million transactions-I don't see them with a stranger." Said another: "A relationship allows [the client] to be more nimble with our firm; rather than having a formal engagement in a project, she may call a partner she knows directly-so it's very efficient for her." Besides promoting the flow of private, valuable information between firm and client, network ties can give the firm access to useful information flowing between other parties. In particular, a firm can benefit significantly if its attorneys sit on corporate boards. One attorney described two notable advantages of board membership this way: "You have the benefit of seeing what other law firms are charging if the company that you sit on is using other firms. . . . And you get the benefit of the commentary that your fellow board people have on legal services and what they consider to be important." As a result of this privileged information, firms whose partners sit on corporate boards are able to charge higher rates for both routine and complex legal work. Law firms perceived to have high social status are able to offer image-enhancing benefits to its clients, since the clients will appear knowledgeable

Background Marital dissolution is ubiquitous in western societies. It poses major scientific and sociological problems both in theoretical and therapeutic terms. Scholars and therapists agree on the existence of a sort of second law of thermodynamics for sentimental relationships. Effort is required to sustain them. Love is not enough. Methodology/Principal Findings Building on a simple version of the second law we use optimal control theory as a novel approach to model sentimental dynamics. Our analysis is consistent with sociological data. We show that, when both partners have similar emotional attributes, there is an optimal effort policy yielding a durable happy union. This policy is prey to structural destabilization resulting from a combination of two factors: there is an effort gap because the optimal policy always entails discomfort and there is a tendency to lower effort to non-sustaining levels due to the instability of the dynamics. Conclusions/Significance These mathematical facts implied by the model unveil an underlying mechanism that may explain couple disruption in real scenarios. Within this framework the apparent paradox that a union consistently planned to last forever will probably break up is explained as a mechanistic consequence of the second law.

daviding says: Entropy may play not only in marriages, but also in service relationships.

daviding says: If the foundation of the system is in entropy rather than equilibrium, we'll need to figure out how exchange-based societies work, and the function of money (as information, in a general theory of systems).

The specific purpose of this paper is to trace the development of entropy-related thought from its thermodynamic origins through its organizational and economic applications to its relationship to money information. That trace reveals that existing entropy measures are of states or changes in states that are caused by energy processes. We propose that entropy may as well be conceived as entropic process. The social emergent specific exchange value provides a metric by which entropic process may be quantified. The analysis connects the traditional state-oriented entropy measures to measures of entropic process in social systems. In doing so, the character of exchange-based societies and the function of money information within them are elaborated.

The research presented in this volume, developed in the EC-funded Project ISCOM (Information Society as a Complex System), takes off from two fundamental premises: -- to guide innovation policies, taking account of the social, economic and geographic dimensions of innovation processes are at least as critical as the science and technology; and -- complex systems science is essential for understanding these dimensions. Online version (possibly available at http://www.springerlink.com/content/978-1-4020-9662-4 -- Table of contents -- 18 Chapters Front Matter I-IX Part 1 Introduction David Lane, Robert Maxfield, Dwight Read and Sander van der Leeuw 1-7 Part I From Biology to Society Front Matter 9-9 From Population to Organization Thinking David Lane, Robert Maxfield, Dwight Read and Sander van der Leeuw 11-42 The Innovation Innovation Dwight Read, David Lane and Sander van der Leeuw 43-84 The Long-Term Evolution of Social Organization Sander van der Leeuw, David Lane and Dwight Read 85-116 Biological Metaphors in Economics: Natural Selection and Competition Andrea Ginzburg 117-152 Innovation in the Context of Networks, Hierarchies, and Cohesion Douglas R. White 153-194 Part II Innovation and Urban Systems Front Matter 195-195 The Organization of Urban Systems Anne Bretagnolle, Denise Pumain and Cline Vacchiani-Marcuzzo 197-220 The Self Similarity of Human Social Organization and Dynamics in Cities Luis M.A. Bettencourt, Jose Lobo and Geoffrey B. West 221-236 Innovation Cycles and Urban Dynamics Denise Pumain, Fabien Paulus and Cline Vacchiani-Marcuzzo 237-260 Part III Innovation and Market Systems Front Matter 261-261 Building a New Market System: Effective Action, Redirection and Generative Relationships David Lane and Robert Maxfield 263-288 Incorporating a New Technology into Agent-Artifact Space: The Case of Control Syst

I watched the first video, and it made the U.S. social security system (mismanagement) easy to understand. Note the references: Odum, Basteson, Jantsch.

Ecolanguage introduces a few new things: (1) the use of regular motion as a part of standard grammar, and (2) the use of a visual symmetry -- the hexagonal snowflake -- to stand for an organization of any kind, at any level of nature and society. In the center, we put the ruler. Everything else is based on things which came before. By using old and new things, Ecolanguage comprises: (A) an international systems language, (B) an accelerated learning strategy, (C) an integration of important and crucial topics, and (D) a scientific philosophy, emerging from many thinkers and writers over the last century, that brings the life, social, and cognitive sciences into the same picture as the physical sciences. We put the new basics of INFORMATION and ORGANIZATION alongside the established basics of MATTER and ENERGY. Now we can represent purposiveness, intention, relationship, agreement, and belief. We can locate the position of mathematical and physical deduction within a larger picture of communication and exchange. We can indicate both analysis and synthesis, including the redundancy of parts and their transcendence into wholes. It is a picture of our perceptual framework, no matter where we look. For a fun primer on this philosophy, please watch: New Chart, for Descartes. (For the old pointers, see the following bibliography.)

We introduce the concept of structural analysis of a business enterprise. The practice of enterprise structural analysis amounts to the construction of an enterprise model using business entities defined in an enterprise ontology or enterprise architecture and creating specific views of the enterprise based on relationships among the entities. As we demonstrate through a simple yet illustrative example of a hypothetical coffee shop business, these views can provide many insights and points of analysis. Structural analysis provides an interactive, analytical environment for a user to view an enterprise from multiple perspectives, an approach not unlike On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) but for analyzing the qualitative or structural aspects of the enterprise.

daviding says: This article describes business entities, and works concretely through an example with activities, resources and organization in a coffee shop.

In an age in which consumers, businesses and governments are increasingly focused on socially responsible actions, much of our planet's natural and financial resources are being squandered simply by conducting business as usual: Much of the world's food supply never makes it to consumers. A considerable portion of the water used each year is frivoled away by poor agricultural water management. And road congestion, poor routing and other traffic issues around the globe contribute to substantial crude oil waste. Much - if not most - of this inefficiency can be attributed to the fact that we have optimized the way the world works within silos, with little regard for how the processes and systems that drive our planet interrelate. We've tuned these processes to generate specific outcomes for individual communities, nations, enterprises and value chains. To root out inefficiencies and reclaim a substantial portion of that which is lost, businesses, industries, governments and cities will need to think in terms of systems, or more accurately, a system of systems. We'll also need to collaborate at unprecedented levels. Certainly, no single organization owns the world's food system, and no single entity can fix the world's healthcare system. Success will depend upon understanding the full set of cause-and-effect relationships that link systems and using this knowledge to create greater synergy. The chief obstacle that remains is mindset - moving from short-sighted to long-term perspectives, from siloed to system-of-systems decision making. Download the IBM Institute for Business Value executive report, "The world's trillion-dollar challenge: Using a system-of-systems approach to build a smarter planet," to discover a framework for helping solve real-world problems using a system-of-systems approach.

daviding says: The use of the phrase "systems of systems" in a report from IBM Global Business Services (i.e. the management consulting arm) is interesting.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the University of Central Florida's (UCF) Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering (IASE) today announced they are working together to prepare students for jobs in systems engineering, a profession that is critical to the creation of the smart cities, healthcare systems and advanced products and systems of the future. To help create the systems engineering workforce that is needed to tackle society's most pressing technology development and integration challenges, IBM is investing more than $2 million in software, in-kind donations and consulting. Through this relationship, UCF students gain hands-on experience using IBM's most popular systems engineering software. In addition to its use in classroom activities, the IBM software gives students and faculty tools to compete for grants and participate in advanced research projects. IBM executives and technical staff provide input into the development of IASE curriculum and coursework, and support the university's efforts to create a learning environment that emulates the real world of systems engineering.

daviding says: The significance of the systems engineering program at the University of Central Florida (in Orlando) is noted not only by IBM, but by INCOSE (Samantha Brown, president) in this press release.