This contribution develops a new notion of technology based on core ideas of Niklas Luhmann’s sociological system theory. Technology will be conceptualised as a self-making, self-referencing system, distinct from society and the human individual. Its basal operation is information in the medium of operativeness, processing along the binary code of work/fail. Through close coupling with social s...

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals or organizations called nodes, which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, common interest, and exchange of finance, relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige. A cyber threat can be both unintentional and intentional, targeted or non targeted, and it can come from a variety of sourc...

Social network systems identify existing relations between social entities and provide a set of automatic inferences on these relations, promoting better interactions and collaborations between these entities. However, we find that most of existing organizational information systems do not provide, from scratch, social network features, even though they have to manage somehow social entities. T...

T paper offers a theory of communication visibility based on a field study of the implementation of a new enterprise social networking site in a large financial services organization. The emerging theory suggests that once invisible communication occurring between others in the organization becomes visible for third parties, those third parties could improve their metaknowledge (i.e., knowledge...

All sufficiently-complex engineered systems require oversight by committees of technical experts. Decision-making by these expert committees is poorly understood. A number of social dynamics might impact the sharing of information among expert specialists. Some of these could be beneficial to the decision process but some could lead to decisions that are not well-informed by all of the specialt...

Twitter is a platform where people can coalesce around a common interest, signaled by a hashtag, and form a community of practice. As with all online initiatives, questions remain about what motivates people to follow and contribute to communities, and why they participate in varying degrees. This paper explores social motivations for participation in the Twitter-based community of practice, #h...

Social network systems identify existing relations between social entities and provide a set of automatic inferences on these relations, promoting better interactions and collaborations between these entities. However, we find that most of existing organizational information systems do not provide in a native way, social network features, even though they have to manage somehow social entities....

I n 1999, Leon Eisenberg wrote an essay entitled, " Does social medicine still matter in an era of molecular medicine? " [1]. Anticipating the scientifi c discussion that would accompany the complete mapping of the human genome, followed by hubristic predictions of an end to disease through the introduction of gene-based therapy, Eisenberg reminded his readers of the inherent social basis of di...

The paper at hand aimes at identifying the assumptions that lead to the results presented in an article by Michael Macy and Yoshimichi Sato published in PNAS. In answer to a failed replication, the authors provided the source code of their model and here the results of carefully studying that code are presented. The main finding is that the simulation program implements an assumption that is mo...