research-article

Towards viable computer systems: a set theory interpretation of ecological dependence within Beer's self-organizing viable system model

Authors:

R. J. Thompson,

A. Taleb-Bendiab,

D. Llewellyn-JonesAuthors Info & Claims

MEDES '09: Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems

Article No.: 11, Pages 73 - 77

https://doi.org/10.1145/1643823.1643837

Published: 27 October 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Presented is research articulating a novel technology progressing resource management within self-organizing systems. Examining both Cybernetic and Autonomic Computing techniques we evolve a set-theory oriented, atomically-derived, emergent model that reflects an algorithmic decomposition of Beer's recursive, multi-agent Viable System Model, pertinent by its composition of multiple and independent entities, sharing one or more objectives. Integrated management promotes each sub-system as a whole within a closed ecological meta-boundary. The relationships between sub-systems is demonstrated via syntax subscripts, while the relationship linking recursive levels is recognized via superscripts. The resultant design grammar endorses autonomy versus governance, exploiting cybernetic, biological and mathematical metaphors, crucially seeking inherent learning and control through system-environment interplay. Focusing on interactions and inter-relationships, the self-organizing environments exhibit evolution of systemic elements, conserving yet managing resources provided by each entity. Research ultimately aspires augm entation of the Autonomic Computing state of the art into the original field of Viable Computing Systems.

References

[1]

K. Bennett, "Legacy Systems, Coping With Success," IEEE Software, vol. 12, pp. 19--23, 1995.

Digital Library

[2]

P. Horn IBM, in Address to the National Academy of Engineers: IBM, 2001.

[3]

P. Horn, Autonomic Computing: IBM's Perspective on the State of Information Technology, 2001.

[4]

W. B. Cannon, The Wisdom of the Body. London, 1932.

[5]

C. Bernard, of the Académie Française, Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale. Paris, 1865.

[6]

W. R. Ashby, An Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Chapman and Hall, 1956.

[7]

R. J. Thompson, A. G. Laws, D. J. Reilly, A. Taleb-Bendiab, and D. Llewellyn-Jones, "Viable Computer Systems: A Cybernetic Approach to Autonomic Computing," presented at IEEE SMC UK&RI 6th Conference on Cybernetic Systems 2007, University College Dublin Republic of Ireland.

[8]

S. Beer, Brain of the Firm, 1 ed: Penguin Press, 1972.

[9]

P. Horn and F. West, "Introduction," IBM Systems Journal, vol. 44, 2005.

[10]

F. Varela, H. Maturana, and R. Uribe, "Autopoiesis: the Organization of Living Systems, its Characterization and a Model," Biosystems, vol. 5, pp. 187--196.

[11]

H. R. Maturana, F. J. Varela, and S. Beer, Autopoietic systems a characterization of the living organization, Expanded ed. ed: Biological Computer Laboratory, Univ. of Illinois, 1975.

[12]

F. Macfarlane Burnet and F. Fenner, The Production of Antibodies, 2 ed. Melbourne: Macmillan and Co., 1949.

[13]

A. G. Laws, Taleb-Bendiab, A., Wade, S. J., "Towards a Viable Reference Architecture for Multi-Agent Supported Holonic Manufacturing Systems," Journal of Applied Systems Studies, vol. 2, 2001.

[14]

P. Horn, presented at Address to the National Academy of Engineers, 2001.

[15]

A. G. Laws, Wade, S. J., "Towards A Model Of Viable Software Maintenance Management - VSMM," 2000.

[16]

M. E. Bratman, D. J. Israel, and e. al., "Plans and Resource-Bounded Practical Reasoning," Computational Intelligence, vol. 4, pp. 349--355, 1988.

[17]

M. M. Lehman, "Programs, Life Cycles, and Laws of Software Evolution," Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 68, pp. 1060--1076, 1980.

[18]

A. G. Laws, Taleb-Bendiab, A., Wade, S. J., "Genetically Modified Software: Realizing Viable Autonomic Agency," pp. 5, 2005.

[19]

Laws A. G., Taleb-Bendiab A., Wade S. J., and R. D., "From Wetware to Software," Springer Verlag, 2003.

[20]

A. G. Laws, A. Taleb-Bendiab, and S. J. Wade, "Bridging The Gap: The Cybernetics of Auto-Adaptive Software Systems," presented at Software Evolution and Evolutionary Computation Symposium Abstracts, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, U.K., 2002.

[21]

J. O. Kephart and D. M. Chess, "The Vision of Autonomic Computing," Computer, vol. 36, 2003.

Digital Library

[22]

C. Herring and S. Kaplan, "The Viable System Model for Software," presented at 4th World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (SCI'2000), Orlando, Florida, 2000.

[23]

E. A. Stoyanov, M. A. Wischy, and D. Roller, "Cybernetics and General Systems Theory (GST) Principles for Autonomic Computing Design," presented at Second International Conference On Autonomic Computing, 2005.

Digital Library

[24]

E. A. Stoyanov, A. MacWilliams, M. A. Wischy, and D. Roller, "Distributed Software Maintenance Using an Autonomic System Management Approach based on the Viable System Model," presented at 20th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA 2006), Silicon Valley, California, USA, 2006.

[25]

R. Espejo and R. Harnden, The Viable System Model Interpretations and Applications of Stafford Beer's VSM: John Wiley&Sons, 1989.

[26]

D. W. Bustard, R. Sterritt, A. Taleb-Bendiab, and A. Laws, "Autonomic system design based on the integrated use of SSM and VSM," Artificial Intelligence Review, vol. Volume 25, Number 4, pp. 313--327, 2006.

Digital Library

[27]

R. J. Thompson, Laws A. G, Reilly, D. J, and D. Llewellyn-Jones, "An Algorithmic Cybernetic Case Study of Viable Computing Systems Within a Genetically Modified Software Environment," presented at 8th IEEE International Conference on Cybernetic Intelligent Systems, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, 2009.

[28]

M. M. Lehman, "The Programming Process," IBM, Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S.A., Research Report RC 2722, September 1969.

[29]

M. M. Lehman, "Feedback in the Software Evolution Process," presented at Keynote Address, CSR Eleventh Annual Workshop on Software Evolution: Models and Metrics, Dublin, 1994.

[30]

B. Mandelbrot, "Stochastic models for the Earth's relief, the shape and the fractal dimension of the coastlines, and the number-area rule for islands," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 72, pp. 3825--8, 1975, October.

[31]

V. Stenning, "On the Role of an Environment," presented at Proc. Int. Conf. on Software Eng., Monterey CA, 1987.

Digital Library

[32]

J. Ziv and A. Lempel, "A Universal Algorithm for Sequential Data Compression," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 23, pp. 337--343, 1977.

Digital Library

Cited By

Hariharan TGanesh LVenkatraman VSharma PPotdar V(2021)Morphological Analysis of general system–environment complexes: Representation and applicationSystems Research and Behavioral Science10.1002/sres.279439:2(218-240)Online publication date: 11-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2794
Vahidi AAliahmadi ATeimoury E(2019)Researches status and trends of management cybernetics and viable system modelKybernetes10.1108/K-11-2017-043348:5(1011-1044)Online publication date: 7-May-2019
https://doi.org/10.1108/K-11-2017-0433
Thompson RLaws AReilly DTaleb-Bendiab ALlewellyn-Jones D(2010)An open-bounded cybernetic case study of viable computing systems: Applying directive correlation to an algorithmic hot-swapping scenario2010 IEEE 9th International Conference on Cyberntic Intelligent Systems10.1109/UKRICIS.2010.5898151(1-6)Online publication date: Sep-2010
https://doi.org/10.1109/UKRICIS.2010.5898151

Index Terms

Towards viable computer systems: a set theory interpretation of ecological dependence within Beer's self-organizing viable system model
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Distributed artificial intelligence
      1. Intelligent agents
      2. Multi-agent systems

Recommendations

Flourishing Ethics

This essay describes a new ethical theory that has begun to coalesce from the works of several scholars in the international computer ethics community. I call the new theory Flourishing Ethics' because of its Aristotelian roots, though it also includes ...
Computer ethics: Its birth and its future

This article discusses some ``historical milestones'' in computer ethics, as well as two alternative visions of the future of computer ethics. Topics include the impressive foundation for computer ethics laid down by Norbert Wiener in the 1940s and early ...
The ultimate technology: The end of technology and the task of nature

One of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, Martin Heidegger 1889-1976, died prior to the remarkable cloning of the sheep Dolly and before Dr. Venter started his experiments on creating synthetic life, and he never explicitly discussed ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

MEDES '09: Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems

October 2009

525 pages

ISBN:9781605588292

DOI:10.1145/1643823

General Chair:
Nicolas Spyratos
Universite Paris-Sud, France
,
Program Chairs:
Epaminondas Kapetanios
University of Westminster, UK
,
Agma Traina
University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
,
Publications Chairs:
Richard Chbeir
Bourgogne University, France Youakim Badr, INSA de Lyon, France
,
Youakim Badr
INSA de Lyon, France

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

The French Chapter of ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing

In-Cooperation

SIGAPP: ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 October 2009

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

MEDES '09

Sponsor:

MEDES '09: The International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems 2009

October 27 - 30, 2009

France

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 267 of 682 submissions, 39%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

3
Total Citations
View Citations
29
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)4
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 08 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Hariharan TGanesh LVenkatraman VSharma PPotdar V(2021)Morphological Analysis of general system–environment complexes: Representation and applicationSystems Research and Behavioral Science10.1002/sres.279439:2(218-240)Online publication date: 11-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2794
Vahidi AAliahmadi ATeimoury E(2019)Researches status and trends of management cybernetics and viable system modelKybernetes10.1108/K-11-2017-043348:5(1011-1044)Online publication date: 7-May-2019
https://doi.org/10.1108/K-11-2017-0433
Thompson RLaws AReilly DTaleb-Bendiab ALlewellyn-Jones D(2010)An open-bounded cybernetic case study of viable computing systems: Applying directive correlation to an algorithmic hot-swapping scenario2010 IEEE 9th International Conference on Cyberntic Intelligent Systems10.1109/UKRICIS.2010.5898151(1-6)Online publication date: Sep-2010
https://doi.org/10.1109/UKRICIS.2010.5898151

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten