"Self Organization of Computing and Information Systems" was the topic of yesterdays meeting at Stadtroda (about 20 km east of Jena). The faculties of computer science at the FSU Jena discussed the new focal point of research: "Self-Organization".... and of course we have organised ourselves...
Much of our enthusiasm and of our effort went into the discussion about the definition of the term "Self-Organization", but the result was not really satisfying...Take 4 computer scientists and give them a topic to define...and you will end up in at least 5 different disjoint definitions. So what does the term mean...at least to me?
I would agree to the following (minimal) definition:
- a self-organized system is organizing itself with its own resources with no help or influence from outside
- self-organizing systems are adapting themselves over the time to fulfill required necessities/ to survive / to achieve a given goal
- as viewed from outside, self-organizing system indepently develop emerging (higher order) properties that were not previously given within the system layout
Autonomous agents independently fulfilling (higher order) tasks while adapting themselves using semantic description of their environment / using semantics to combine independent and unconnected services / ...
