Open Digital Platforms And Ecosystems

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Openness as a concept crucially influences preservation of information age heritage. It is related mostly to infrastructure, openness of information systems and knowledge. Thus, it provides informing professionals with a huge number of possibilities. In such a way, Interoperable Open Architecture was developed in order to accomplish performance, scalability and reliability synergy. It is based upon open standards that deliver interoperability among systems and applications built at different times and places. These open standards allow interoperability using common System Data Dictionary as a meta-data collection describing the semantic meaning of information within intersystem data exchange. This semantic content gives the context by which applications could access relevant data in information processing. Naturally, the context is needed to understand the content and to confirm a meaning of the accessed data. Thus, systems working upon common semantic models are in possibility to be fully interoperable.

Open access portfolio provides new opportunities and challenges in the field of digital assets preservation. Hence, publicly funded archives, museums and libraries as important custodians of cultural heritage should develop system for openly accessible digital content that will foster the exchange of ideas and knowledge of entire civilization memory.

The concept of openness is more emphasized in cloud computing environments where various technology and applications platforms are in use providing delegated information processing and information storage functions. Such scenarios create a need for trustworthy and secured information storage. It is resulted from delegation process in which the information creators give information away from their place for storing and accessing purposes. Information creators are very often more likely to entrust their information to cloud computing delegates. This issue shows that the information creators more prefer the availability of information delegated to the cloud system than its security. Such notions warn of risk of losing digital heritage sustainability over the time.

In the field of open systems conceptualization, deployment and development, two approach and definitions of open systems and coexist.

Computing-based open system is a set of open programming code, interfaces, and standards allowing any user of one system to operate and communicate with any other system. It is known fact that in past the term open source was applied only to the source programming code. In recent times, it is often applied to other forms of deployment such as open system ecology, and open technology including open hardware, open software, open content and open access. Open-technology combines hardware, software and content in a way that brake barriers between technology and information produced and accessed by this same technology.. This open system based culture or ideology takes the view that the principles apply more generally to facilitate concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, in contrast with more centralized models of development and deployment.

System-based open systems as flexible systems that can adapt and change by interacting with its external environment are in their roots thermodynamic systems that exchange mass, as well as energy and momentum, with the environment. The properties of open systems are simplest near the state of thermodynamic equilibrium. If the deviation of an open system from thermodynamic equilibrium is small and the system’s state changes slowly, then the nonequilibrium state may be characterized by the same parameters as the equilibrium state. The degree of disorder of such open systems, like the degree of disorder of systems in the equilibrium state, is characterized by the entropy. According to the second law of thermodynamics, in a closed isolated system the entropy increases, tending toward its maximum equilibrium value, whereas the entropy production tends toward zero. In contrast to a closed system, steady states with constant entropy production are possible in open systems; in this case the entropy must be removed from the system. The theory of open systems is important for understanding the physicochemical processes underlying life, since a living organism is a stable self-regulating open system that has a high level of organization on both the molecular and macroscopic levels. The treatment of living systems as open systems in which nonlinear chemical reactions take place opens up new possibilities for study of the processes of molecular self-organization at the early stages of the evolution of life. The theory of open systems is a particular case of the general theory of systems, which include data-processing systems, transportation junctions, power-supply systems, and others that are treated in cybernetics. Such systems, although not thermodynamic, can be described by a system of balance equations that in the general case are nonlinear and analogous to those considered for physicochemical and biological open systems.

Besides these two core description of open system, there is also interaction of a system and society in a form of an open system as a process in which man and machine exchange information with their environment. In the context of open systems, interesting view is setting up organization as a system per se with several perspectives. Scott (Scott and Davis, 2007) stressed three perspectives on organizations: Organizations as Rational Systems, Organizations as Natural Systems, and Organizations as Open Systems. Open systems perspective is crucial in transforming our view on digital heritage that would be preserved for a long time. Bertalanffy (1956) stated that open system theory was initially developed by defining the concept of a system in which existed structure provides interdependence of individual parts. Bertalanffy also argued that the open system is strongly connected with its environment. Thus, the changes in the environment could start a process of changing in the system. In the same time, a change in the system could produce the environment change. This notion of the open system has also influenced the study of living systems, including groups and large social systems.

Bertalanffy found that living (organic) systems are open systems since they import and export materials maintaining themselves in exchange of materials with environment, and in continuous building up and breaking down of their components (Bertalanffy, 1950). Hence, Bellinger also stated an organization as open system made by interrelationships among the parts of the system and parts from external environment (Bellinger, 2004). Hence, the system approach was quickly applied to the study of organizations, and with it an acknowledgment that the environment surrounding and permeating organizations had important effects on society behavior and structure. The complexities of organizational behavior are well noted in academic research. It does seem that unlike the closed systems organization, the open systems organization enjoys benefits such as speed of reacting to change, and to exploiting opportunity that other systems fail to achieve (Ahmad, Veerapandian, & Wee Yu Ghee, 2011). This doesn’t mean that open systems are superior for all organizations, in all social environments. There are other forces in the social and geopolitical environment that may make one paradigm more effective than others.