Emergent interoperability a friendly critique of the FInES roadmap Jonathan Cave

1. Emergent interoperability
a friendly critique of the FInES
roadmap
Jonathan Cave
FInES Cluster meeting
12 October 2012

2. What is regulation?
• 19th century definition of a well-regulated
system: one in proper working order
• This presupposes intent, design or common
understanding, but…
• It does not suppose or imply a regulator

3. Regulatory implications of
interoperability
• Positive – internalise externalities and
coordination problems
• Negative – exclude ‘market discipline’ and the
variation part of evolution
• Ambiguous - benifits in one domain (e.g.
security) can be used to justify distortions in
another (profit, innovation)
• Example – data repositories in the supply
chain

4. Where is this in FInES?
• Knowledge spaces:
– socioeconomic – from commerce back to
economy, evolved meaning of citizenship and
shared individual identity
– Networked enterprise (the X enterprise)
– Enterprise systems
• Commonality – the emergence of new
‘animals’ in new ecosystems.

5. So what?
• Enterprise is a characteristic of human
interaction, not a noun.
• Don’t let the framework define the
phenomenology
• Regulation is not just context – it comes from
somewhere and changes at the same rate as
regulated behaviour
• This leads us to complexity

6. Three specific implications
• Interoperating systems are complex systems – they self-
organise, but in what direction?
• Interoperability, like well-regulatedness, is an emergent
property
– Emergence speaks of the amount of specific information (e.g. about the past) needed to
predict (or influence) the future. The more you need to know, the stronger the
emergence
– Prediction may become imprecise, but without becoming less informative. Approximate
predictions should be used for tolerant forms of regulation
• Competition and monopoly (utility regulation) itself are
extremes;
– Interoperability creates many more types of interaction
– Some are good, some not – need to look beyond the form to the consequences
– This means (stakeholder) engagement or free movement
• Commercial pitch – regulatory issues in the cloud