Metaphors make for weak models but this will do for now. Computers function on two systems levels. An operating system that we don't see but is the starting point for usage and the applications that we actually use. Without both systems the computer is useless.
In systems thinking many discussions revolve around the local or applications level. Education, business, cognitive, communication, cooperative, competitive systems are simply local applications of systems thinking. They, like computer applications are a very limited subset of principles, ideas and constraints. Like a spreadsheet these systems address and are useful within a limited field.
On the global or operational level something much larger is happening. Without the global operating systems running unseen in the background the local applications cannot function. So what are these global operating systems? I see a trinity.
Dissipative Structures or system per Pregogine. Stuff exists and things happen. Initial starting point is the big bang or the uncaused cause, take your pick. The end point is the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Autopoietic systems that recreate themselves out of this mess and define their own boundaries. These systems tend to use energy and matter to maintain the status-quo. They are incapable of goal-driven evolution but subject to internal errors, i.e. genetic mutation. To stay at this level invites eventual decay and death.
Allopoietic systems that are goal-seeking. These systems use matter and energy to create something other then themselves. Novelty, adaptability and change are their reason for being. These systems provide the motive for the active 'hunt for negative entropy.'
I have adapted this model from Fritjof Capra's Web of Life. The last system is my take on his idea of consciousness.
Why this trinity of operating systems? Because stuff exists and interacts. That stuff and the interactions are suspended between the decay towards entropy and the drive towards emerging complexity. That suspension creates tension and bifurcation points between the status-quo and change.
Applications are governed by these operating systems. It is unseen and unavoidable. Since the applications that humans are really with contain organic systems, esp. other people they must deal with the notion of Clausewitzian friction, reason, emotion and chance. Any discussion of local systems must take into account the global constraints and friction. Without these elements the problem cannot be framed nor can a solution be found.
Two short papers that I'm inferring a lot of this from;
Principles of Systems and Cybernetics: an evolutionary perspective, http://pcp.lanl.gov/papers/PrinciplesCybSys.pdf
and Destruction and Creation, http://goalsys.com/books/documents/DESTRUCTION_AND_CREATION.pdf.
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