social machines paradigm

David De Roure

The Social Machines Paradigm

Overview

1. Shifts in scholarship

2. Social Machines

3. Knowledge Infrastructure

The Big Picture

More people

More

machin

es

Big Data

Big Compute

Conventional

Computation

“Big Social”

Social Networks

e-infrastructure

Online R&D

(Science

2.0)

Social

Machines

@dder

Edwards, P. N., et al. (2013) Knowledge Infrastructures: Intellectual Frameworks and

Research Challenges. Ann Arbor: Deep Blue. http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/97552

Christine B

org

man

theODI.org

F i r s t

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/science-and-technology-committee/news/report-responsible-use-of-data/

New Social Processes

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/series/reading-the-riots

www.zooniverse.org

Scientists

Talk

Forum

Image

Classification

data reduction

Citizen Scientists

http://www.climateprediction.net/ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2455/abstract

Community Software

Supercomputer

Digital Music Collections

Student-sourced ground truth

Community Software

Linked Data Repositories

Supercomputer

23,000 hours of

recorded music

Music Information

Retrieval Community

SALAMI

Notifications and automatic re-runs

Machines are users too

Autonomic

Curation

Self-repair

New research?

“In it” not “On it”

In it not on it

1. Shifts in scholarship

2. Social Machines

3. Knowledge Infrastructure

Real life is and must be full of all kinds of social

constraint – the very processes from which society

arises. Computers can help if we use them to

create abstract social machines on the Web:

processes in which the people do the creative work

and the machine does the administration... The

stage is set for an evolutionary growth of new

social engines. The ability to create new forms of

social process would be given to the world at large,

and development would be rapid.

Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999 (pp. 172–175)

Social MachinesPrinciples of

Empowerment

1

2

SOCIAM: The Theory and Practice of Social Machines is funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

(EPSRC) under grant number EPJ017728/1 and comprises the Universities of Southampton, Oxford and Edinburgh. See sociam.org

SOCIAM - Social Machines - will research into pioneering methods

of supporting purposeful human interaction on the World Wide Web,

of the kind exemplified by phenomena such as Wikipedia and Galaxy

Zoo. These collaborations are empowering, as communities identify

and solve their own problems, harnessing their commitment, local

knowledge and embedded skills, without having to rely on remote

experts or governments.http://sociam.org/

“Yet Wikipedia and its stated ambition to “compile the sum of all human knowledge” are in trouble. The volunteer workforce that built the project’s flagship, the English-language Wikipedia—and must defend it against vandalism, hoaxes, and manipulation—has shrunk by more than a third since 2007 and is still shrinking…

The main source of those problems is not mysterious. The loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase participation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage…”

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/

Pip Willcox

Mark d’Invernohttp://goldsmiths.musiccircleproject.com/

PRAISE: Performance and pRactice Agents Inspiring Social Education

Digital networks have radically increased the speed and scope with which individuals

can effect social change, transforming the relationship between people and

institutions. But the impact to date of this transformation has been more disruptive

and ad hoc, as opposed to constructive and systematic. Existing tools and practices

for harnessing the potential of digital networks have failed to sustain a public sphere

where institutions and individuals can come together to understand, learn and act

constructively on societal problems. By building “social machines” that bring system

solutions to such critical global challenges as gender equality and literacy learning,

the Laboratory for Social Machines seeks to contribute to the creation of the next

generation of the public sphere.

http://socialmachines.media.mit.edu/

http://sociam.org/socm2015/

Trajectories... distinguished by purpose

Trajectories through Social Machines https://sites.google.com/site/bwebobs13/

Normal Science – computer science is a puzzle-

solving activity under our current paradigm, inspired

by great achievements (in the left quadrants).

Successful social machines, like Wikipedia, are the

anomaly. They do not yield to standard techniques

despite attempts to extend those techniques and fit

social machines in as machines. cf Newtonian

mechanics.

Kuhn cycle

We are in the period of crisis, where the failure of established

methods permits us to experiment with new methods to crack the

anomaly. We experiment with social machines as an underpinning

model.

If successful, social machines become the new paradigm and

scientific revolution has occurred. This is evidenced by the papers

and books that train the next generation.

1. Shifts in scholarship

2. Social Machines

3. Knowledge Infrastructure

Web as lens

Web as artefact

WebObservatories

http://www.w3.org/community/webobservatory/

A computationally-enabled sense-making network of expertise,

data, software, models and narratives

Iain Buchan

Towards interoperable observatories

Te

ch

nic

al a

nd

so

cia

l in

terf

ace

http://www.w3.org/community/webobservatory/

The Web

Observatory

Tiropanis, T., Hall, W., Shadbolt, N., De Roure, D., Contractor, N., and Hendler, J.

The web science observatory. IEEE Intelligent Systems 28, 2 (2013), 100–104.

The R Dimensions

Research Objects facilitate research that is

reproducible, repeatable, replicable, reusable,

referenceable, retrievable, reviewable, replayable,

re-interpretable, reprocessable, recomposable,

reconstructable, repurposable, reliable,

respectful, reputable, revealable, recoverable,

restorable, reparable, refreshable?”

@dder 14 April 2014

sci method

access

understand

new use

social

curation

Research Object

Principles

Scholarly

Machines

EcosystemDavid De Roure, JCDL 2013

Richard O’Bierne

STORYTELLING AS A STETHOSCOPE

FOR SOCIAL MACHINES

1. Sociality through storytelling potential

and realization

2. Sustainability through reactivity and

interactivity

3. Emergence through collaborative

authorship and mixed authority

Zooniverse is a highly storified Social Machine

Facebook doesn’t allow for improvisation

Wikipedia assignsauthority rights rigidly

http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/ora:8033Segolene Tarte, David De Roure and Pip Willcox, (2014). Working out the plot: the role of stories in social machines

social machines

social machines

Not just machines —try calling them socials

social machinessocial machines

1. Shifts in scholarship beyond the fourth paradigm

– Crowd + Machines, and our automated future

2. Social Machines

– Humans are empowered, creative, subversive, curious Ludere humanum est*

– A lens, a pattern, … and a new paradigm?

– You are designers of social machines

3. Knowledge Infrastructure

– Sensemaking network of Scholarly Social Machines

– Observatories, Social Objects, r* research

– Don’t forget it is fundamentally social

* Pip Willcox

rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org

The FORCE2015 Research Communication and

e-Scholarship Conference brings together researchers,

scholars, librarians, archivists, information scientists,

publishers, and research funders in a lively forum – to

broaden awareness of current efforts across disciplines,

but also to define the future through discussions,

challenge projects, demonstrations, and the seeding

of new partnerships and collaborations.

Pip

Will

co

x

Thanks to Christine Borgman, Iain Buchan, Mark d’Inverno,Chris Lintott, Richard O’Bierne, Kevin Page, Rob Simpson,Ségolène Tarte, Pip Willcox; FORCE11, SOCIAM; AndrewW. Mellon Foundation, EPSRC, ESRC, AHRC.

david.deroure@oerc.ox.ac.ukwww.oerc.ox.ac.uk/people/dder

@dder

http://www.slideshare.net/davidderoure/social-machines-paradigm

www.oerc.ox.ac.uk

www.force11.org

sociam.org

EPSRC EP/J017728/1

www.oerc.ox.ac.uk

david.deroure@oerc.ox.ac.uk

@dder

Abstract

Today we see the rise of Social Machines, like Twitter, Wikipedia and Galaxy Zoo—where communities identify and solve their own problems, harnessing commitment, local knowledge and embedded skills, without having to rely on experts or governments.

The Social Machines paradigm provides a lens onto the interacting sociotechnical systems of our hybrid digital-physical world, citizen-centric and at scale—emphasising empowerment and sociality in a world of pervasive technology adoption and automation.

This talk will present the Social Machines paradigm as an approach to social media analytics and a rethinking of our scholarly practices and knowledge infrastructure.