Directed Self-Organization Technologies (DSOT): theoretical foundations, operational parameters and a programme of experimental verification

The work builds a set of control parameters of self-organization comparable across systems of different nature, together with a programme for testing claims about their influence. Methods of directed influence on structure formation have been developed inside separate fields, but a set of quantities comparable across fields — one that allows transferring not the result but the order of actions, and testing that transferability — does not exist. Five control parameters of an environment are proposed: rhythm, invested energy, connectivity, geometry, barrier, each given an operational definition (unit, method of counting, conditions of invalidity). A procedure is described for measuring the parameters in a system involving human beings from the event stream, without surveying participants, and a procedure separating coherence due to coupling between elements from coherence due to a common external rhythm. Conditions of applicability are formulated so as to permit the conclusion that the approach is inapplicable to a given system. The propositions submitted for defence are supplied with pre-announced refuting outcomes.