Understanding Error Correction and its Role as Part of the Communication Channel in Environments composed of Self-Integrating Systems

The raise of complexity of technical systems also raises knowledge required to set them up and to maintain them. The cost to evolve such systems can be prohibitive. In the field of Autonomic Computing, technical systems should therefore have various self-healing capabilities allowing system owners to provide only partial, potentially inconsistent updates of the system. The self-healing or self-integrating system shall find out the remaining changes to communications and functionalities in order to accommodate change and yet still restore function. This issue becomes even more interesting in context of Internet of Things and Industrial Internet where previously unexpected device combinations can be assembled in order to provide a surprising new function. In order to pursue higher levels of self-integration capabilities I propose to think of self-integration as sophisticated error correcting communications. Therefore, this paper discusses an extended scope of error correction with the purpose to emphasize error correction's role as an integrated element of bi-directional communication channels in self-integrating, autonomic communication scenarios.