Modern ICT (Information and Communication Technology)
has developed a vision where the "computer" is no longer associated
with the concept of a single device or a network of devices, but rather
the entirety of situated services originating in a digital world, which
are perceived through the physical world. It is observed that services
with explicit user input and output are becoming to be replaced by a
computing landscape sensing the physical world via a huge variety of
sensors, and controlling it via a plethora of actuators. The nature and
appearance of computing devices is changing to be hidden in the fabric
of everyday life, invisibly networked, and omnipresent, with applications
greatly being based on the notions of context and knowledge.
Interaction with such globe spanning, modern ICT systems will presumably
be more implicit, at the periphery of human attention, rather
than explicit, i.e. at the focus of human attention.
Socio-inspired ICT assumes that future, globe scale ICT systems should
be viewed as social systems. Such a view challenges research to identify
and formalize the principles of interaction and adaptation in social
systems, so as to be able to ground future ICT systems on those principles.
This position paper therefore is concerned with the intersection of
social behaviour and modern ICT, creating or recreating social conventions
and social contexts through the use of pervasive, globe-spanning,
omnipresent and participative ICT.