![[Pasted image 20230709141742.png]] An ecosystem is a phrase used to describe the “whole” of an environment and the resources and events within that environment. The word ecosystem is often used in the reference to biological systems as in the case of Wikipedia [1] which includes all organisms living in a particular area, as well as all non-living, physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact. But this description needs a closer examination in defining what an ecosystem can include. Ecosystems can include both living and non-living materials and artifacts. It can include the business, social, biological and technological systems that exist in the physical resources, places and relationships and virtualizes inside computing world. ![[Pasted image 20230709105608.png|Figure 1: Different thinking views]] Fundamentally, we have to cross the bridge between Mechanistic and Systematic thinking models (above) and radically change focus from solution approach to eco-related abstraction of critical components and their behavioral patterns. ## The Spheres ![[Pasted image 20230709105707.png|Figure 2: Ecosystem Spheres]] The ecosystem (above) is composed from four major spheres (of influence) separating worlds and system domains into viewpoints connected together, defined as: **Business scenario:** Conglomerate of Business [CoB](#cob) The world of businesses and enterprise commerce. This covers the enterprise world of financial and trading exchanges that we are most familiar with in our everyday working lives. **Living Biological scenario:** Web of Life [WoL](#wol) The physical environment and resources. The naturally made world we live in. This viewpoint includes the environment and the concerns residing in the area of availability and sustainability of natural resources. They are also concerned with the physiological aspects and well-being of humans , societies and the wider planet “health” **Social interaction scenario:** Society of relationships [SoR](#sor) The personal, community and society of relationships, rules and interactions. This viewpoint is the psychological and cognitive aspects of human behavior, group and society behavior often seen in formal and informal human interactions. **Technological scenario:** Internet of Things [IoT](#sor) The constructed world of technology, machines, communications, controls, networks and circuits. The original IoT definition could be seen as an extension of RFID tagging and EPOS automation [1], but we have expanded this out into a metadata description of all technologically constructed systems (man-made, not naturally made) We believe this is a richer description of what the Internet of Things or Internet of Objects can represent in its widest context. ![[Pasted image 20230709105752.png|Figure 3: SPHERES viewpoints]] The sphere #viewpoints are a “separation of concerns” that express a specific view or scenario, be it technical, commercial, social or biological. However, the key point is - we often see the world view from only one or two of these perspectives. Business commerce may run with issues of availability of natural resources or the dynamics of consumer behavior may change buying patterns. Technological #disruption may introduce emergent new impacts on society and behavior patterns that were not originally conceived. As a conclusion, they are not mutually exclusive and can cross over and interact with each other. The aim is to express each view with metadata that represents the sphere viewpoint which can then be connected to the other viewpoints in a way that provides a realistic representation of the total ecosystem. The spheres combined provide an “Information Model” of the ecosystem which may be used for different perspective scenarios. ## Conglomerate of Business This is the world of business and enterprise transactions. It is driven by commercial and financial exchanges between formal and informal relationships. The CoB is the viewpoint most familiar to business people and enterprises that operation in marketplaces and have organizational structures that strategize, plan, design, develop, procure, deliver and service business transactions. ![[Pasted image 20230709105813.png|Figure 4: CoB Metadata]] The key metadata that this world view of the ecosystem represents include: - Business systems - Barter and Trading - Company entities - Enterprise corporate networks (customer, consumers, intermediates, suppliers and resources) - Industry monopolies and governance - Business markets, segments ## Web of Life This is the world of natural resources and biological systems. The development of the physical environment and the resources availability in “our” world is the concerns of this sphere viewpoint. While this matters to every living thing on planet Earth, this also speaks to the history of the world and the path that sustainable resources are currently taking and how the other spheres, business, society and technology are treating and consuming these natural resources. ![[Pasted image 20230709105833.png|Figure 5: WoL Metadata]] The key metadata that this world view of the ecosystem represents include: - Living systems - Organisms - Communities of organisms - Parts of organisms, natural resources - Super organisms - Biological world ## Society of relationships This is the world of social interactions, human relationships and the psychological and cognitive behavior involved in these interactions. These human communications are also increasingly being augmented by intelligence from on-line sources, on-line social networks and early stages of artificial intelligence that we expect to see evolve further over time as this develops. The SoR considers personal, group, community and society interactions. It involves both rational and non-rational actions, bias and behavior and the political and legal processes that are often associated with these transactions of communication. ![[Pasted image 20230709105857.png|Figure 6: SoR Metadata]] The key metadata that this world view of the ecosystem represents include: - Social Systems - Member of Group - Community of Groups - Political affiliation - Social Network - Super Society - Social World **Internet of Things [IoT]**While the Web of Life is concerned with the natural world of living systems and physical resources; the definition we have expanded in the term “Internet of Things” IoT encompasses the man-made constructed world or non-living things. These include the physical machines, connections, circuits and communications in what can be described as the “world of Machines”. The IoT is the technological perspective viewpoint of the ecosystem that is today all pervasive in many aspects of our daily lives. A key theme of this perspective is the idea that IoT is “invasive” into the other spheres of the ecosystem being seen often both as an enabler of beneficial and harmful influence to the capabilities and resources in the living world, society and as an enabler of many business commerce and social media and social network transactions today. The term “**System of Systems** [SoS]” is an associated term which in the context we applied to the definition of the ecosystem as connections between many technologies and object resources through technology. The tagging, syntax and semantic data used to describe these systems and their interrelations is how we describe the complete Internet of things [IoT]. ![[Pasted image 20230709105923.png|Figure 7: IoT Metadata]] The definition of System of Systems that are a property of the IoT and the wider ecosystem is the classifications of **Open Systems and Closed Systems**. An open system is a system which continuously interacts with its environment. The interaction can take the form of information, energy, or material transfers into or out of the system boundary, depending on the discipline which defines the concept. An open system is contrasted with the concept of an isolated system which exchanges energy, matter, or information with its environment [1]. The Ecosystem spheres concepts develop the idea of open and closed systems which call upon various disciplines of natural and social science [1]. The key metadata that this world view of the ecosystem represents include: - Machine systems - Transistor - Processor - Computer network - System of Systems - Machine world ## The whole picture of the ecosystem The combination of the sphere views creates a consistent viewpoint of the interdependencies between these systems. While each system sphere is a view point, together combined they create a realistic metadata description of the competing resources, sources and priorities that affect products and services that are trading in the Business world seen from the [CoB](#cob) viewpoint. By considering the [IoT]], [WoL](#wol) and [SoR](#sor) view points as well you start to get a sense of the availability, consensus or restrictions that all these different views in the ecosystem can have on the outcomes and goals in that ecosystem. ![[Pasted image 20230709105953.png|Figure 8: Ecosystem View = CoB + WoL + SoR + IoT]] We also see many ecosystems within an ecosystem and so the concept is “**recursive**” in that you can create multiple views of the same ecosystem which in themselves are an ecosystem for each view. For example, an Automotive Supply Chain is one [CoB](#cob) Ecosystem but it can be seen as a number of other [CoB](#cob) ecosystems: Suppliers ecosystem, intermediates ecosystem, sales ecosystem, delivery ecosystem, aftermarket ecosystem. Also, the social and resource viewpoints in [SoR](#sor) and [IoT] can have different ecosystem perspectives: Personal buying preferences ecosystem, peer group and socio-economic group viewpoints, society values and norms ecosystem, sustainable raw resources ecosystem; product design ecosystem, bundled products ecosystems, provisioning and trading resources ecosystems, the political and legal ecosystems. The Web of Life [WoL](#wol) introduces the mindset of the relationships of the personal news and wants, the community behavior patterns; the trends , the sustainable natural world resources ecosystem. While some of these metadata descriptions may be less quantifiable than others, their outcomes and consequences can be measured and the metrics and metadata assigned will start to make sense of the wider ecosystem. We believe that in doing so we move further towards realizing the interconnectedness of these spheres (or viewpoints) and to better represent how views and systems can be designed and optimized to make a better world performance. The **SPHERES** is a #philosophy, #framework and #methodology that seeks to combine these views into an “Ecosystem exchange model” view that represents how the people, businesses, relationships, products and services and the resources all interact. This approach represents a more realistic view of how marketplaces and services work in the real world and how ultimately the development of systems and services needs to evolve through the emergence and convergence of technologies in Cloud Computing, social networking , virtual reality , cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. ## References [1] WIKIPEDIA: DEFINITIONS ## Related to [[Decomposition of System and World Spheres]] [[Open vs. Closed Systems]] [[System Spheres]] [[World Spheres]] [[Worlds Reloaded]] [[Ecosystem Approach]]