Enhancing future mass ICT with social capabilities

Abstract

Next generation socio-technical systems research is challenged by the complex interactions of technological progress and the social nature of individuals using and adopting technology. As for example, most recent advances in automotive technologies, together with the massive deployment of vehicles worldwide, suggest to no longer understand traffic as a collection of cars, but rather as a web of social connections. In this paper we seek to adopt the capacities of socially aware interactions among individuals to vehicles engaged in mass traffic. We discuss how socially aware cars " could be making use of their social habitus, i.e. any information which can be inferred from all of its past and present social relations, social interactions and social states when exposing to other vehicles in live traffic. Examples like socially inspired lane changes" and "socially controlled hazard zone avoidance" - evidenced by large scale agent based simulations - show that socially capable vehicles represent a potentially effective way to avoid today undesirable mass traffic phenomena. A prospective is given on how to make social awareness an underpinning design principle for ICT that is deployed at massive scale in general. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.