Service-oriented Communities: Visions and Contributions towards Social Organizations (1401.3621v1)

Abstract: With the increase of the populations, resources are becoming scarcer, and a smarter way to make use of them becomes a vital necessity of our societies. On the other hand, resource management is traditionally carried out through well established organizations, policies, and regulations that are often considered as impossible to restructure. Our position is that merely expanding the traditional approaches might not be enough. Systems must be radically rethought in order to achieve a truly effective and rational use of the available resources. Classical concepts such as demand and supply need to be rethought as well, as they operate artificial classifications that limit the true potential of systems and organizations. In what follows we propose our vision to future, "smarter" systems able to overcome the limitations of the status quo. Such systems require what Boulding called "gestalts," namely concepts able to "directing research towards the gaps which they reveal". In this paper we elaborate on this and show how such gestalts can pave the way towards novel reformulations of traditional services able to reach a better and more sensible management of the available resources and cope with their scarcity. Our vision of a Service-oriented Community is also introduced. We believe that such communities---in heterarchical coexistence with traditional systems---provide the necessary diversity and innovation orientation to prevent societal lock-ins such as the ones we are experiencing in assisting our elderly ones.