Self-Management and the Many Facets of “Non-Self”

The common perspective of nearly all “self-*” approaches is that of considering human beings as “non-self” from the information system perspective (Figure 1-a). Indeed, one of the very common goals of all approaches is to move humans out-of-the-loop, by making information systems able to perform in an autonomous way all that kind of (costly and often too complex to bear) human activity related to configuring and maintaining information systems so as to have them properly working under all conditions. However, beside this common perspective, a number of diverse conceptions co-exist for what should be actually considered “self” and what, beside humans, “non-self”.