Term	Definition
Actor Network Theory	Social theory influenced by the post-structural philosophy. It was originally developed in the science studies by Michael Callon and Bruno Latour in the late '70s. Actor Network Theory (ANT) tries to explain how material-semiotic networks come together to act as a whole. It is more interested in the "how" rather than the "why". It attempts to build ideas on a non-Euclidean topology by understanding the co-construction of space and objects in a complex socio-technical process. Therefore the "actor-network" is the networked macro-actor that can be observed when considering the many "actants" (human and non-human agencies) moving together. Other key concepts for ANT are translation symmetry and reflexivity.
Adaptive	Ability of a system to respond to changes in its environment by modifying itself. These modifications can be manifold and uncertain and do not need to be deterministic. However an adaptive system can also change itself through clear and definite rules on how to modify according to certain changes in the environment (determinism).
API	Application Program Interface. An API defines ways in which application programs may request services from a given system. An API determines the vocabulary and calling conventions that the programmer should employ in order to use the services. An API may be either 1) language-dependent; that is available only in a particular programming language or 2) language-independent; that is written in a way that means it can be called from several programming languages. (Wikipedia)
Associative system	If an autopoietic system is one that recursively self-organises through the complex adaptive interactions of groups of agents an associative system can be defined as one with those processes as well as crucially a high degree of cooperation between agents in the project of reaching those goals and reflexivity about the processes and attempts at reaching them. [...] An associative system is one that chooses (through its agents? agency) to explicitly include qualities such as rationality (knowing why and how) explicit verbal commitment (deeds speak for them) trust and altruism (Axelrod 1984: 173-4) in its forms of cooperation. (D12.1 p.15)
Autonomous	A property of an entity: Autonomous entity is self-sufficient and therefore does not depend on other entities.
Autopoiesis	Ability of a system to reproduce and evolve itself. Self-producing systems. "A composite unity whose organisation can be described as a closed network of productions of components that through their interactions constitute the network of productions that produce them and specify its extension by constituting its boundaries in their domain of existence" (Maturana 1987: 349). Self-manufacture with the recursive ability to spawn more copies of oneself each of which embodies the same ability recursively. (D1.2)
Centralised points of control	See Single Point of Control.
Centralised points of failure	See Single Point of Failure.
Cognition	The treatment of information allowing (an organism or system) to make representations of its environment retain information and combine information in order to plan actions.
Cloud computing	Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources are provided as a service over the Internet. (Wikipedia).
Community Cloud Computing	Community Cloud Computing is a Digital Ecosystems compliant version of Cloud Computing.
Collaboration	People working for joint intelligent effort.
Collaborative community	A group of people working together for joint intelligent effort.
Collaborative visualisation	Collaboratively creating a visual representation out of data.
Collectivism	Collectivism is a term used to describe any moral political or social outlook that stresses human interdependence and the importance of a collective rather than the importance of separate individuals. Collectivists focus on community and society and seek to give priority to group goals over individual goals. (Wikipedia)
Community (online)	A virtual community e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as newsletters telephone email internet social network service or instant messages rather than face to face for social professional educational or other purposes. If the mechanism is a computer network it is called an online community. Virtual and online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life. Many means are used in social software separately or in combination including text-based chatrooms and forums that use voice video text or avatars. (Wikipedia)
Community Currencies	In economics a local currency in its common usage is a currency not backed by a national government (and not necessarily legal tender) and intended to trade only in a small area. These currencies are also referred to as community currency and are a form of alternative currency or complementary currency. They encompass a wide range of forms both physically and financially and often are associated with a particular economic discourse. (Wikipedia).Community currency in online environments allows members to earn points for their contributions and input. (D10.5)
Community Network	"Community networking has its origins in services such as the Free-Net which emerged in the '80s and early '90s to offer online access sometimes along with local news and information" (Shapiro 1999). Two main understandings of CNs could be considered. First the traditional one refers to CNs as the from the grassroots bottom-up movements promoted by Schuler: ?New computer-based community networks are a recent innovation that are intended to help revitalize strengthen and help expand existing people-based community networks much in the same way that previous civic innovation have helped communities historically.? (Schuler 1996:25). Second in the last years CNs have referred to telecommunication infrastructures created and owned by (the core participation of) a local government (see: Chlamtac Gumaste and Szabo 2005).
Complex system	A system where complexity is measured by the H Function of Shannon i.e. the quantity of information that is entropy uncertainty lack of information. From a minimum of information it is possible to calculate the information that is lacking in order to build the system from its elements and understanding it. Depends on the level of observation of the choice among what we consider its constitutive elements. Complexity is measured by the information we do not have and would need to specify the system.
Computer Science	Computer science (or computing science) is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that describe and transform information. (Wikipedia)
Context	The circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting. Considering the case of working with large-scale information systems recording the assertion and the interpretation context(s) helps implement contextual views to a knowledge database.
Data	Container of information without interpretation.
Data mining	A process by which hidden patterns are extracted from data.
DE	Acronym for: Digital Ecosystem(s).
Decay	A gradual change resulting in the destruction or dissolution. (A consequence of the tendency towards increased entropy or chaos in the natural [energy] systems.)
Deliverable	Project report document submitted to the European Commission and made publicly available in order to fulfil contractual requirements of research funding and in order to disseminate research findings.
Democratic process	Theories of democratic process are helpful to frame the challenges of governance that arise from diversity which can be understood to operate on various levels: cultural social linguistic theoretical philosophical epistemological and so on. The area of social theory involves conceptualising based on a fundamental assumption of equality diverse actors can live and work together as a community.
Description	Usually written text about nature of an entity.
Determinism	In biology determinism refers to the concept that the fate of an organism is determined by a pre-existing set of instructions. In its crudest expression the approach would assume that a person's destiny was entirely dictated by the nucleotide sequence in their DNA. The concept crops up in a variety of disguises: in E.O. Wilson's writings on socio-biology; in Richard Dawkins' notions concerning selfish genes and the origins of altruistic behaviour. It is a form of reductionism and is in direct opposition to concepts such as vitalism. The idea that all of cancer can be understood in terms of the molecular biology of genes and DNA is a deterministic belief that so far has produced little in the way of practical benefits. (D1.2)
Digital Divide	The gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology as well as the imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen. (Wikipedia)
Digital Ecosystem	An online environment inspired by biological systems and actively populated by agents that enable communities to collaborate. Any distributed adaptive open socio-technical system with properties of self-organisation scalability and sustainability inspired by natural ecosystems.
Distributed system	A system consisting of several independent but related components. Distributed is the opposite of centralised.
Dynamical system	Accounts for a set of possible trajectories attached to particular dynamics. It can be continuous or non-continuous (linear non-linear) accordingly to the defined dynamics. A central concept in a dynamic system is the concept of attractors of which there are three kinds: fixed point periodical orbit and chaotic. Symbolic dynamics is a very useful concept in the study of the evolution of probabilities when trajectories can be described as sequences of symbols. The concept of dynamic systems was introduced by Henri Poincarè and is applied mainly in Artificial Intelligence.
Empiricism	Empiricism holds that general theories can be inferred from many empirical examples or facts through induction and prioritise applied real world research in order to gather data that can allow for such theorisation.
Entity	Something that can be clearly distinguished from other things.
Epistemology	"A philosophical concept meaning the theory of knowledge which underpins methodology. For example the type of methodology employed in a piece of social research will be determined by epistemological assumptions" (Bilton et al. 1996: 658; D1.2).
Evolution	Change over time arising from a background of natural selection ("survival of the fittest").
Evolutionary process	A process in which every step is made by natural selection (?survival of the fittest?) according to environment. A process in which every step is made by natural selection ("survival of the fittest") according to environment. In social context the term ?evolutionary? is strongly related to the term ?adaptive?. The attribute ?evolutionary? characterises those processes which change a certain social system in respect to the environment. Such a system is not static but flexible and adaptive. This allows the system to react to changing conditions and to sustain a changing environment. Because the changes do not need to be deterministic but can be open and manifold the sum of all processes in all equal systems can be regarded as evolutionary. The term adaptive characterises a system. The term "evolutionary" characterises the related processes which make a system adaptive.
Evolutive system	Natural open self-organizing systems such as biological sociological or neural systems.
Folksonomy	A conceptual model emerging from a community of users tagging content. A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content;[1] this practice is also known as collaborative tagging social classification social indexing and social tagging. (Wikipedia)
Framework	A conceptual structure used to solve a complex issue (in computer science).
Free Networks	A Free Network is any computer network that allows free local transit following the guidelines of a peering agreement. The term "transit" refers to information flowing through the network. While most of members specialise in wireless networking a FreeNetwork can be built using Ethernet fiber optics or any other kind of networking technology. A FreeNetwork is defined by what its users can do with it rather than the particular technology it is built on (freenetworks.org). However in this context it may be more interesting than the concept of Scale-Free Networks. A scale-free network is a network whose degree of distribution follows a power law at least asymptotically. That is the fraction P(k) of nodes in the network having k connections to other nodes goes for large values of k as P(k) ~ k−γ where γ is a constant whose value is typically in the range 2<γ<3 although occasionally it may lie outside these bounds. Scale-free networks are noteworthy because many empirically observed networks appear to be scale-free including the world wide web protein networks citation networks and some social networks. (OPAALS Wiki)
Free/open source	The term 'Free/Open Source' describes : 1. Software protected under special copyright licenses aiming to ensure the availability and free (re)distribution of the source code. Source code refers to the set of instructions written by developers that make up a program. Proprietary software is distributed only in the form of object code the machine readable translation of the source code which is required for computers to run programs. Open Source software is distributed both as source and object code. ? A process of software development that incorporates some unique characteristics such as the ability of users to suggest new features report faults in the programs etc. ? A movement based on the ideals of the hacker culture which is premised upon the freedom to use create and tinker software and the values of gift culture such as the ideal of reciprocity (Kollock 1999). The most prominent examples of open source software include the GNU/Linux operating system the Apache server program the Python computer language the GNOME and KDE graphical user interfaces.
Functionalism	"A theoretical perspective associated with Durkheim and Parsons based on an analogy between social systems and organic systems. It claims that the character of a society's various institutions must be understood in terms of the function each performs in enabling the smooth running of society as a whole" (Bilton et al. 1996: 660; D1.2).
Governance	"The process of the enacting of policies and decisions on the part of officials within a political apparatus. We can speak of 'government' as a process or the government to refer to the officialdom responsible for the taking of binding political decisions. While in the past virtually all governments were headed by monarchs or emperors in most modern societies governments are run by officials who do not inherit their positions of power but are elected or appointed on the basis of expertise and qualifications" (Giddens 1997: 582; D1.2)
Guigoh	About guigoh as a platform: the guigoh platform is a Web 2.0 environment and was developed to permit the emergence of virtual knowledge communities through the exchange of knowledge and experiences in a network structure aiming to innovate the production and the improvement of social capital. In this sense it can be recognized as an OKS. It is Open Source Code software (GPL) using Java and presenting the following features: a Social Network Collaborative editing tool a Webconference tool (Chat VoIP and Whiteboard) and an Agenda System for On-line journals.
	About guigoh as a primate: Guigó-de-sergipe or guigó-de-coimbra (Callicebus coimbrai) was the last primate discovered in the Brazilian rainforest in 1999. Its natural habitat are the forests of Sergipe and Northern Bahia in the northeast region of Brazil. It is one of the most threatened primate species in the American continent. This name was adopted for the guigoh platform as a way to claim attention to this little monkey helping its preservation.
Hermeneutics	Hermeneutics essentially takes as fundamentally significant the various forms in which human understanding (of art communication social life) manifests itself (Gadamer 1976: 18). Central to this position is language (or as Gadamer (1976: 19) puts it ?the universal phenomenon of human linguisticality?) and the ways in which it mediated individual understanding and interpretation of social experience. Ultimately the argument of the hermeneutic position is that human understanding of everything in the world is carried within language. Rooted thus in philosophies of the aesthetic and rhetoric hermeneutics implies that ?the grasping of the meaning of the text takes on something of the character of an independent productive act? (Gadamer 1976: 24). (D1.2 p29)
Homeostasis	Maintenance of equilibrium.
Identity	"Normally used in social sciences with relation to self-identification of groups or individuals. Conscious beings and things which contain conscious beings as members such as societies institutions and organisations have identity. This can be seen as the ability to communicate the fact of existence and belonging" (Scruton 1996). "Not something which is natural or fixed but something that evolves within a cultural context" (Stevenson 2003: 156; D1.2). In computer science: Identity is usually used for authentication and authorisation. In social science: Identity is an umbrella term used throughout the social sciences to describe an individual's comprehension of him or herself as a discrete separate entity. (Wikipedia)
Individualism	A branch of social theory that takes the individual as the focus of social action. The attitude that individual personhood and rights take precedence over all collectives in moral and political decision making.
Information	Interpretation of data in context.
Information visualisation	The use of computer-supported interactive visual representations of abstract data to amplify cognition.
Institution	Widely defined by the OED as 'an established law custom usage practice organisation or other element in the political or social life of a people; a regulative principle or convention subservient to the needs of an organised community or the general ends of civilisation'. (Scruton 1996)
Interdependence	A relationship between entities in which they depend on each other to work properly/to complete their task.
Interface	An interface must be conceptualised as an entity communicating with the individual (Laurel 1991). That is designing an interface does not simply mean giving shape to information connected to a software program but exploring the communication mechanisms established between a virtual entity as revealed via the interface and an actual entity: the individual who is interacting with the program. The graphic interface is nothing more than the space of action and interaction of the user. In this sense there is a resemblance between the creation process of concrete architectonic space and digital spaces. The interface serves as a gateway to access users' cognition of such systems given that the mental processing involved in the interpretation of the informational contents depends on the stimuli that lead to perception motivated by this interface.
Isomorphism	A one-to-one correspondence between the elements of two sets such that the result of an operation on elements of one set corresponds to the result of the analogous operation on their images in the other set.
JXTA	JXTA (Juxtapose) is an open source P2P protocol specification.
Keyword	A word or concept describing something for a reason.
Knowledge	Information that has been integrated in a fashion that allows further interpretation and usage of information. Knowledge is a state of consciousness which is a mental image of a reality within or outside the knowing subject. In general this image of reality is regarded as true but the valuation of truth can differ from individual to individual. Knowledge arises from the interpretation of information and/or from the linking of information with other knowledge. Regarding the sum of individuals who share the same image of reality knowledge has a social validity and diffusion. Only living beings can store knowledge. The successful transfer of knowledge relies on an appropriate reversible and reliable transformation from knowledge into information/data and the retransformation or interpretation from information/data to a corresponding state of consciousness.
Knowledge management	Knowledge management embraces those processes practices and systems which are developed to support systematic and successful knowledge transfer.
Knowledge transfer	Knowledge transfer is communicative process in which knowledge is transferred from one individual (sender) to another (receiver). This transfer relies on the explicit creation of information which is an abstract and transferable representation of the sender's knowledge. This information needs to be interpreted by the receiver to constitute new knowledge at the receiver. The creation and the interpretation of information however are not unequivocal. That's why the success of knowledge transfer is not clear and hard to measure.
Logic	The study of the principles of reasoning especially of the structure of propositions as distinguished from their content and of method and validity in deductive reasoning.
Metadata	Data about data or description about data itself.
Metaphor	A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another thus making an implicit comparison.
Multi-stakeholder process	A process involving several stakeholders.
Natural ecosystems	Synonym for democratic process.
Network	A structure of interconnected entities.
Objectivism	Objectivism considers that 'the object (society) predominates the subject (the knowledgeable human agent)' (Giddens 1984).
OKS	Open Knowledge Space. Online Knowledge Society.
Ontogeny	The history of structural changes in a particular living being.
Ontology	SS: A branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of existence (http://wiki.opaals.org/InterdisciplinaryLexicon) CS: A data model that represents a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. (http://wiki.opaals.org/InterdisciplinaryLexicon) A specification of a conceptualisation.
OPAALS	Acronym for: Open Philosophies for Associative Autopoietic digitaL ecosystemS. OPAALS is a multi-disciplinary network of research excellence for developing the science and technology behind Digital Ecosystems. OPAALS research covers social science linguistics computer science software engineering and biology. (opaals.org)
Open Innovation	The use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand the markets for external use of innovation respectively. It is the antithesis of the traditional vertical integration model of industrial innovation. While the contours of the new model of innovation remain obscure it is clear that an adequate understanding will require a more externally focussed perspective involving the actions of multiple actors in a far more distributed innovation environment. (Chesborough 2006). Chesbrough H. (2006) Open Innovation: A Paradigm for Understanding Industrial Innovation. In: Chesborough H. Vanhaverbeke W and West J. (eds.) Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm Oxford: Oxford University PressOpposite of closed.
Open collaboration	Collaboration that is partially or completely open.
Open Knowledge Space	A software platform for social networking communication and collaboration. The OKS can be described as a set of tools structures processes and social rules aimed at enabling the formation of communities and the creation of knowledge. It is the place where community members can collaborate and contribute to the creation and sharing of knowledge and can search and access information and knowledge. (D10.5)
Open Source	This entry describes Open Source (OS) Open Source Software (OSS) Free Open Source (FOS) Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) wiki.opaals.eu/JOIE/FOS
Phenomenology	The analysis of consciousness in its intentionality functions as a counterpoint to the representational formulation of perception. It is consciousness that constitutes the meaning of the world's objects. Consciousness is revealed through the phenomenon: the consciousness of the perceptive experience involved in the observation of the phenomenon and the opening of consciousness to the world that is to say the intentionality of consciousness.
Peer	Individual in an equal position (of power) is a peer.
P2P	Short for peer to peer a structure in which transactions occur between peers.
Peer to peer infrastructure	A flexible network of intelligent machines relying on digital technologies without a central point of dependence or failure. Alternative to client-server architecture.
Peer to peer network	Decentralised horizontal computer-to-computer network without a central point of dependence or failure.
Perception	The way the subject acquaints itself about its environment using the senses. It is a function that treats the information provided by sensorial data and is strongly related to cognition. There are many different mechanisms of perception. It is an experience (perceptual experience) involved in the consciousness/knowledge of objects and its properties. Perception has two faces: qualia the phenomenal properties immediately accessible by the subject (to have this experience) and intentionality mental states that can represent things in the world by which they are directed at or about (consist in a content and a psychological mode).
Positivism	Theories based on observation of that which really exists and is observable certain schools of sociology which concern themselves with questions of method and regard their subject matter as social facts and seek to avoid scientific explanations of a normative nature. (Scruton 1996; D1.2)
Project cluster	Group of related projects funded by the EC under the same framework programme.
Rationalism	The philosophical theory that the world is knowable to reason and only to reason and that the deliverances of the senses stand to be corrected in the light of reason. ... More widely 'rationalism' is used to denote the disposition to favour clear and explicit solutions based on principles whatever the problems and to attemt to force reality into the mould of an ideal of reason-governed behaviour. (Scruton 1996: "A Dictionary of Political Thought")
RDF	Resource Description Framework originally a metadata model that has been more widely applied in modelling information.
Reflexivity	Ability to self-inspect.
Requirements	Documentation of needs or necessities to deliver a project Ability to self-inspect.
Resource	Anything that has an identity. In web anything that has been identified by an URL.
REST	Representational State Transfer an architectural style originally presented by Roy Fielding in his thesis. HTTP is an important protocol that follows REST architectural style in its design.
RESTful	A system which follows the principles of REST.
RSS	Really Simple Syndication A family of web feed formats.
SBVR	Semantic Business Vocabulary and Rules.
Scalability	A property of a system to adapt itself to changes in scale.
Self-organisation	Ability of a system to re-arrange its components (internal structure) without outside control or influence.
Semantic Web	A common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application enterprise and community boundaries. W3C Semantic Web is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners. It is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF).
Single Point of Control	This concept is related to "single point of failure. It means that by controlling one point of the network it is possible to control the entire network. Networks with a single point of control are easier to manipulate and be brought down.
Single Point of Failure	A Single Point of Failure (SPOF) is a part of a system which if it fails will stop the entire system from working. It is undesirable in any system whose goal is high availability be that a network software application or other industrial system. The assessment of a potentially single location of failure identifies the critical components of a complex system that would provoke a total system failure in case of malfunction. Highly reliable systems may not rely on any such individual component.
Sironta	Sironta is collaboration toolkit and OKS Desktop application built on the Eclipse Platform.
SME	Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.
Social Science	According to Anthony Giddens "social practices (reproduced across time and space) should be regarded as the basic subject matter of the social sciences" (Giddens 1983: 77). Social sciences seek to understand how human beings construct interact with and understand themselves and their (social) environments. This could be summarized as an opposition between a kind of mechanical objectivity and a kind of hermeneutic relativity. The social sciences could be said to construct knowledge from a process of observing and engaging with inevitably subjective human experiences and contexts. This compels "the recognition of the hermeneutic nature of social description" (Giddens 1983: 77). Social science research is bifurcated into plural processes of seeking plural meanings from an infinite number of potential perspectives. These methods of social research can be so different e.g. qualitative and quantitative that they often appear to be intradisciplinarily at odds with one another. In this sense in practice as well as in definition social science is innately relativist and can be manifested in multiple ways. Ref: Giddens A. (1983) ?Comments on the theory of structration? in Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour Vol. 13 (1).
Socio-economics	Socioeconomics or socio-economics is the study of the relationship between economic activity and social life. The field is often considered multidisciplinary using theories and methods from sociology economics history psychology and many others. It has emerged as a separate field of study in the late twentieth century. In many cases however socioeconomists focus on the social impact of some sort of economic change. Such changes might include a closing factory market manipulation the signing of international trade treaties new natural gas regulation etc. Such social effects can be wide-ranging in size anywhere from local effects on a small community to changes to an entire society. (Wikipedia)
Socio-economic development	Socio-economic development is the process of social and economic development in a society. Socio-economic development is measured with indicators such as GDP life expectancy literacy and levels of employment. Changes in less-tangible factors are also considered such as personal dignity freedom of association personal safety and freedom from fear of physical harm and the extent of participation in civil society. Causes of socio-economic impacts are for example new technologies changes in laws changes in the physical environment and ecological changes. (Wikipedia)
Socio-technical system	Socio technical systems in organizational development is the term for an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces. The term also refers to the interaction between society's complex infrastructures and human behavior. In this sense society itself and most of its sub-structures are complex socio technical systems. (Wikipedia)
SPARQL	SPARQL is an RDF (Resource Description Framework) query language which has received the status of "W3C Recommendation".
Specification	An explicit set of requirements.
Structure	Arrangement of various entities.
Subjectivism	D12.10 p. 29: Subjectivism concerns itself with "a social world in which the categories of experience were already formulated by and in the 'meaningful conduct' of human subjects" (Giddens 1995: 178). In other words pure observation of social events involving human actors is insufficient and more attention should also be placed on hermeneutic understanding.
Sustainability	Ability of an (eco)-system to maintain itself and its properties.
Tagging	The act of adding descriptive keywords to label content.
Taxonomy	Division into ordered groups or categories.
Thesaurus	A thesaurus is a work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning (containing synonyms and sometimes antonyms) in contrast to a dictionary which contains definitions and pronunciations. (Wikipedia)
Transformation	A rule that systematically converts one syntactic form or form of a sentence into another.
Tree structure	A way of representing hierarchical structures.
Trust	Management perspective (Social Science): The willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectations that the other party will perform a particular action important to the trustee irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party (Mayer R.C. Davis J.H. Schoorman F.D. 1995. An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review vol. 20 pp. 709?734.; wiki.opaals.eu/InterdisciplinaryLexiconSocialScience) Oxford English Dictionary definition: a. Confidence in or reliance on some quality or attribute of a person or thing or the truth of a statement; b. Confident expectation of something; hope; c. Confidence in the ability and intention of a buyer to pay at a future time for goods supplied without present payment. (http://wiki.opaals.eu/InterdisciplinaryLexiconSocialScience) "Emphasising the fact that modern life requires people to rely on large-scale abstract systems of knowledge expertise and social organisation beyond their full understanding or control" (Bilton et al. 1996: 671; D1.2).
URI	Uniform Resource Identifier
User	A person using a computer system (user in computer science).
Visual representation	A representation of information in visual form.
Visualisation	Process of graphically displaying real or simulated (scientific) data. Two main approaches may be distinguished: sensory and arbitrary representations. In short sensory representations base visualisation on the natural human sensory processing systems (e.g. annotated natural objects which we recognise "without thinking"). Arbitrary representations base visualisation on agreed models which need formal studying before interpretation (e.g. symbolic diagrams that can efficiently capture formal relationships).
Visualisation pipeline	The chained data transformations (or filters) of creating visual representations out of data.
Web API	Web API is an Application Programming Interface (API) that is exposed to applications as web resources and/or web services. Web APIs are generally language-independent.
Wille 2	Wille 2 is a component-based visualisation system that can be configured on a P2P network.
Work Package	Collection of related deliverables (i.e. project report document submitted to the European Commission and made publicly available in order to fulfil contractual requirements of research funding and in order to disseminate research findings) in a EC funded project.