Tales of Two Societies: On the Complexity of the Coevolution between the Physical Space and the Cyber Space

Abstract

The digital revolution characterized by the current ICT and digital technology enables us to map what happens in this physical space into its cyber counterpart as if we have two simultaneously coexisting societies. One is a society of human agents and ‘things’ in the physical space; the other is the ‘incarnation’ of the former in the cyber space, further empowered by a myriad of software agents. The relation between the two societies provides a challenge for the science of complexity, since the mapping between the two is not just unidirectional (self-imaging), but also bidirectional (cyclical looping). Like a mirror, the cyber space can not only passively reflect the shape of the physical space, but more often than not it can actively shape that shape, which in turn results in the two societies having a feedback relationship with each other as they constantly coevolve. Understanding their coevolutionary dynamics becomes a research agenda that one cannot afford to have missing when looking ahead into the future well-being of humans. In the past, we have seen many individual subjects being developed as walks in between the two societies; however, works which address the complex interactions between the two are still limited. This Special Issue aims to meet the gap.