Social machine

Early computing machinery was used to establish the Social Security Administration. As the largest bookkeeping project in history, this would not have been possible without such technology.

A social machine is an environment comprising humans and technology interacting and producing outputs or action which would not be possible without both parties present.

Concept

Social machines blur the lines between computational processes and input from humans.[1] They often take the form of collaborative online projects which produce web content, such as Wikipedia[2] and citizen science projects like Galaxy Zoo. However, a social machine does not necessarily produce outcomes which directly affect the individuals or machines involved. Social networks such as Twitter have also been defined as social machines.[3]

An academic field investigating the idea has been active since Tim Berners-Lee's book Weaving the web. Social machines are characterised as 'social systems on the Web ... computational entities governed by both computational and social processes'.[4]

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.[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Shadbolt, Nigel R.; Daniel A. Smith; Elena Simperl; Max Van Kleek; Yang Yang; Wendy Hall (2013). "Towards a Classification Framework for Social Machines" (PDF). WWW 2013 Companion. Retrieved 25 May 2014.
  2. ↑ Berners-Lee, Tim; J. Hendler (2009). "From the Semantic Web to social machines: A research challenge for AI on the World WideWeb" (PDF). Artificial Intelligence. doi:10.1016/j.artint.2009.11.010. Retrieved 25 May 2014.
  3. ↑ Meira, S.R.L.; Buregio, V.A.A.; Nascimento, L.M.; Figueiredo, E. "The Emerging Web of Social Machines". Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), 2011 IEEE 35th Annual (0730-3157). doi:10.1109/COMPSAC.2011.12. ISSN 0730-3157.
  4. ↑ "About". SOCIAM. Retrieved 25 May 2014.
  5. ↑ Berners-Lee, Tim; Mark Fischetti (1999). Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor. Britain: Orion Business. ISBN 0-7528-2090-7.

Further reading

External links

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