Actor-Agent Communities Research Agenda

A novel paradigm for complex problem solving by socio-technical systems-of-systems

Abstract – The complexity of ICT systems increased exponentially over the past decades, and so did the complexity of the problems that we expect them to solve. Paradoxically, however, the more problems are taken over by computers, the higher gets the cognitive load of people that operate them. Possibly, at the origin of this paradox lies the way in which computers are used for solving real-life problems, or rather the way in which we model our problems and solutions within the Turing machine paradigm. However, we are not concerned here with improving the usability of computing platforms and automation systems, but rather with endowing them with the capability of contributing to solving non-standard, real-life complex problems (such as decision making under critical circumstances, dynamic situational contexts, and distributed decision points), where satisfactory solutions can only be obtained through a genuine fusion between the creative thinking of humans and the processing speed, accuracy and endurance of computers.