Compositional features for promoting awareness within and across cooperative applications

Abstract

The existing computational mechanisms for promoting awareness are based on Awareness Models referring to spatial metaphors. These models are mainly based on the notions of focus and nimbus which allow one to compute different measures of awareness between objects. The point made in this paper is that these approaches are focused on how awareness information is produced and perceived but not on how it affects the behavior of the objects. This aspect is relevant if one takes seriously the issue of making awareness mechanisms fully visible and accessible to the involved actors for the purpose of adaptability. We propose the reaction-diffusion metaphor in order to deal with the above requirements. The related Model of Awareness is presented, compared with the Spatial Models and illustrated by some examples.