Interaction Categories
Bio-socio-cultural interactions among persons, initially based on kinship, friendship, or implied by an encounter in a situation (time, space, entities) form the basis for a range of increasingly complex interactions. In addition to the three realms:
the following categories of interactions are addressed: cross-cutting, specialist and participatory.
Cross-cutting interactions
These are interactions that occur everywhere. In a sense they are the building blocks of more complex interactions that are articulated for sectors and for the dwellers of geographic territories. The latter are called participatory interactions as, in the contemporary society, they tend to involve multiple stakeholders.
Attention for these interactions is limited for reasons explained for each of them.
Specialist interactions
These are interactions that are used in specific industrial sectors or scientific disciplines. Typically they are applied by specialists or professionals.
These interactions, and relevant sector interactions lists are included to reflect the sectoral focus of the Millennium Development Goals.
Participatory interactions
The participatory interactions are divided in accordance with the geographic scale for which they are undertaken. For the international, country, urban and rural case, it is assumed that public sector agencies are among the key stakeholders. The NGO case is added for interactions (campaigns) that do not directly involve public sector agencies.
For many participatory interactions there will be a process owner that is included in the Actor Atlas and one or more focal durable content actants that are included in the Actant Dictionary. These inclusions are at the corresponding social scale (international, national, urban, rural or ngo).
Spatial and Temporal Scales, Material and Content Scope
Interactions occur in time and constitute the dynamics of the system with a spatial extent during a time-window of interest. The entities involved can be material, monetary and content. Institutions will normatively delimit the options available to an actor to pursue certain ends, and it may prescribe the use of specific actants.
Bindings for the Interactions
For each interaction in the dictionary, a pattern is provided. This pattern consists of four parts: a name and reference part, a continuant binding part, and an occurrent binding part.
A fourth part is concerned with the content options for the interaction. It contrasts the prevailing practices with a situation in which use is made of the systematized content commons. An estimate of content semiotic performance is based on the principles explained in Content (Ens Dictionary).
The extra attention dedicated to the semiotic performance of content is because overcoming inefficiencies in knowledge markets1 is a main driver for creating and sharing systematized content commons2.
Continuant Binding Options
This part deals with the options for binding the pattern to entities and actants described in the respective dictionaries, and to actors in the actor atlas.
| Category | orders involved3 | stocks and flows involved |
|---|---|---|
| Bio-socio-cultural | natural order | stocks: natural environment, symbols and customs; flows: dwelling, socialization and the passing on of tradition |
| Semiotic | natural order with communication capabilities added | stocks: lexicon & grammar, inventories with carriers; flows: conversions (SECI) |
| Regulative | natural and social order | work system of interest; data and models; method as social capital; enabled by semiotic interactions, for instance to depict a target situation |
| Institutional | natural and social order with certain technologies added | all kinds; social capital as normative and descriptive sources |
| Techno-commercial | natural, social and techno order | normative social capital; financial, tangible and non-tangible assets, time |
| Specialist | narrow focus within natural, social and techno order | normative (dominant) designs and design specifications as non-tangibles; technology roadmaps; RTD projects |
| Participatory | broad focus involving the natural, social and techno order of the territory | normative (dominant) designs, ideas, options, and design specifications as non-tangibles; implementation plans; projects |
Each family of interactions involves particular entities from specific ontological strata. Not recognizing the fundamental constituents of the interactions nurtures poor reuse and high modelling and content creation costs.
The orders involved in an interaction family will determine the interaction's continuant signature.
Occurrent Binding Options
The final part deals with the options for binding slots of the interaction pattern to other interactions. Usually such a binding will involve the handover or sharing of continuants. The signatures of these continuants can be further refined.
Specifying them in reference to standard entities, will facilitate their on-the-fly interpretation and configuration, to fit identified purposes in given situations.
