A formal theory for conceptualizing artefacts and tool manipulations

Abstract

Artefacts (physical and institutional) are ubiquitous of our social environment. We live in a tight network of socio-technical systems, which are systems where agents interact with created objects. There is an increasing need for rigorous methods to model, specify, and reason about socio-technical systems in general, and about artefacts and their functions in particular. We propose a formal theory that serves at the conceptualization of artefacts and their manipulations: design, implementation, existence, use, and persistence.