Resources in Organizing Systems
# Resources in Organizing Systems
A resource is 'anything of value that can support goal-oriented activity'. However, even resource is tangible things, how to organize them is not always obvious because people think of them in different ways. Same resource could be named or described in different ways.
# Resource Domain, Format, Focus and Agency
Resource domain is the notion that resources can be grouped according to the set of characteristics that distinguishes them from other resources. For physical resources, domains can be coarsely distinguished according to the type of matter they are made of using easily perceived properties. For information resources, we distinguish domains based on semantic properties.
For information resources, the most basic format distinction is between physical and digital formats. This distinction is most important in the implementation of an organizing system, but less important at the logical level when designing the system and interactions. While the implementation of an organizing system for physical information resources will be constrained by their format, a similar system for digital information resources, or digital surrogates for physical ones, will not face the same constraints.
Agency is the extent to which a resource can initiate actions on its own. We can define a continuum from passive resources that cannot initiate any actions to active resources that can initiate actions based on information they sense from their environments or obtain through interactions with other resources.
# Passive resources (printed book on a library shelf, a statue in a museum gallery, a case of beer, etc)
Organizing systems containing passive resources are ubiquitous because we live in a world of physical resources that we identify and name. Passive resources are usually tangible and static, and their value comes as a result of some action or interaction with them. Most organizing systems with physical resources, or those with digitized equivalents, treat their resources as passive. None of these resources exhibits any agency, and they cannot initiate any actions to create value on their own.
# Active resources (People, living resources, web-based services, self-driving cars, etc)
Active resources can create effects or value on their own or when they initiate interactions with passive resources.