Motivated by an intention to remedy current complications with Dutch
terminology concerning informatics, the term informaticology is positioned to
denote an academic counterpart of informatics where informatics is conceived of
as a container for a coherent family of practical disciplines ranging from
computer engineering and software engineering to network technology, data
center management, information technology, and information management in a
broad sense.
Informaticology escapes from the limitations of instrumental objectives and
the perspective of usage that both restrict the scope of informatics. That is
achieved by including fiction science in informaticology and by ranking fiction
science on equal terms with computer science and data science, and framing (the
study of) game design, evelopment, assessment and distribution, ranging from
serious gaming to entertainment gaming, as a chapter of fiction science. A
suggestion for the scope of fiction science is specified in some detail.
In order to illustrate the coherence of informaticology thus conceived, a
potential application of fiction to the ontology of instruction sequences and
to software quality assessment is sketched, thereby highlighting a possible
role of fiction (science) within informaticology but outside gaming