The Integrated Open System Model©

Introduction

In the study of complex systems, the idea of emergence is used to indicate the arising of patterns, structures, or properties that cannot be adequately explained by referring only to the system's pre-existing components and their interaction.

To distinguish what we mean when we identify the phenomena of emergence we must focus on what we do when we act in language, for it is in language that we as observers distinguish the worlds we live and know through our conversations. Paying close attention to this network of conversations has become a necessary aspect of social and organizational competence.

From this perspective, information and knowledge are not resident directly in a system but are emergent phenomena requiring human conversations in order to be recognized.

In order to provide a framework for evoking conversation, complex sociotechnic systems must be coherently designed from every level of the system: from technical protocols, such as those defined by the ISO/OSI; to protocols for human interaction among individuals and groups in workgroups, organizations and networks.

ISO/OSI Open Systems Architecture 

The Open System Interconnect (OSI) Reference Model provides a basic model of the software and hardware communications between a computer network and the services provided to a user's application. Its description consists of a stacked set of seven layers. Each layer provides certain services only to the layer immediately above and immediately below it. The implementation details of lower levels are hidden from higher levels.

Layer 1: The Physical Layer

This layer defines the physical transmission of raw data between nodes on the network.

Layer 2: The Data Link Layer

This layer handles frames of data that include additional information, such the source and destination of the data and information that enables the detection of transmission errors.

Layer 3: The Network Layer

This layer handles packets of information that are too large to be handled by a single frame and the data link layer.

Layer 4: The Transport Layer

This layer processes messages by breaking long messages into smaller packets before sending them to the network layer at the data source and then reassembling the small packets into long messages at the receiving end.

Layer 5: The Session Layer

This layer establishes, maintains and terminates connections (i.e., a session) between processes on different nodes of the network.

Layer 6: The Presentation Layer

This layer defines how the network presents itself to applications by translating and transforming data from one format to another.

Layer 7: The Application Layer

This layer defines a set of functions (e.g., file transfer, remote program execution, eamil and chat services and remote database access) provided to applications.

This model describes how successive layers of control information are added to the original data. This information is used to send that original data between nodes on the network - whether in the same room or around the world..

Integrated Open Systems Architecture 

Models which build upon the ISO/OSI model for technical interconnection only concentrate on the hardware and software interconnections. An Integrated Open Systems Architecture that provides interconnection design protocols for human social interactions provides a basis for designing fully integrated systems in which human interaction is seen as the focal point of interconnection in information and communication space.

Truly interactive gaming on the Internet, for example, will ultimately require such an Integrated Open Systems Architecture .

The Integrated Open System Model© ^1,2 is the organizational design necessary to activate complex networks through the interactions of the people who use them. This model recognizes that the structural dynamics of the model begin and end with human conceptualization.

The following model has been developed by Knowledge Arts as a design model for the human and organizational development that will be necessary for people to take full advantage of technical open networks designed using the seven technical layers of the ISO/OSI protocols.

Layer 8: The Information Layer

This layer is concerned with how end users perceive value in the data exchanged through the previous 7 layers.

Layer 9: The Communication Layer

This layer is concerned with the nature and quality of communicative interactions that lead to meaning for the end users. It includes protocols for groupwork and teleconferencing as well as mechanisms for facilitating interactions within informational space in order for people to interpret and act on them.

Layer 10: The Decision Layer

This layer is concerned with how commitment, value and action are initiated from interactions within an open information and communication space.

Layer 11: The Idea Layer

This layer is concerned with possibilities that emerge from the human interactions based on commitments and values that take place in conceptual space. These possibilities often emerge as concepts of the imagination and represent the key survival mechanism of all human systems-the perception of distinction which enables new beginning. They represent the connected way of knowing that results from our experience of how we construct and define our awareness of the knowledge space around us through our interactions.

Footnotes

1. The Integrated Open Systems Model was originally developed by Kathleen Forsythe in 1987 and has been applied in a number of successful projects; e.g. " A Conceptual Design for a Commonwealth Center for Distance Learning". prepared with . Lopianowski, R. Hart, R. Martin and D. Sharp for the Canadian Department of Communications, 1988

2. Forsythe, Kathleen ­ Romancing the Technology ­ Essays on Learning and Technology, unpublished manuscript, 1995