Smart systems are becoming increasingly central to contemporary information technology. Across homes, workplaces, healthcare settings, educational environments, mobility systems, public services and platform-mediated environments, they are no longer merely digital tools that support pre-existing human activities. They increasingly function as sociotechnical arrangements that sense, classify, predict, coordinate, recommend and intervene in everyday practices, reshaping relations between humans, machines, organisations and institutions. For the purposes of this call, smart systems are understood as digitally enabled sociotechnical systems that integrate sensing, data processing, algorithmic decision-making and automated or semi-automated actions to coordinate, mediate and shape human activities across social and organisational contexts. Such systems include, but are not limited to, AI-enabled platforms, intelligent service systems, smart health technologies, smart homes, digital workplaces, automated mobility systems, learning technologies, public-sector digital systems and hybrid human-AI systems.
Contemporary digital transformation is therefore not only a technical process of innovation, automation or optimisation. It also involves the reorganisation of relations between people, institutions, infrastructures, data, expertise and everyday routines. Work on everyday practices and social change is relevant here because it shows how technologies, meanings, materials, competences and future expectations become entangled in the transformation of social life. A key challenge is to understand how smart systems become socially consequential through design, use, institutional embedding, organisational routines, user negotiation, datafication and everyday practice. Interfaces, platforms, data architectures, algorithmic classifications, dashboards, monitoring systems and automated feedback mechanisms may all participate in shaping conduct, allocating responsibility, structuring choices and stabilising norms. The central concern is not only how smart systems are governed, but also how smart systems themselves become part of the governance of sociotechnical transformation. This includes questions of behaviour, interaction, coordination, authority, accountability, trust, resistance, inclusion, exclusion and power. Hybrid intelligence, human-centred AI and human-AI collaboration are especially relevant where they help explain how human and machine intelligence are combined, coordinated, contested or governed in organisational, institutional or everyday contexts.
This special issue invites contributions that examine smart systems not only as technical innovations, but also as systems of behaviour, interaction, coordination, authority and governance. Its broader aim is to advance human-centred, behavioural, organisational and sociotechnical understandings of smart systems and their role in contemporary digital transformation.