[Sociam-soton] Re: Is email a social machine?

[Kieron O'Hara]

Hi Wendy,

I'm definitely with your initial reaction. We define a machine in 
general as something that does work to achieve a goal. A Turing machine 
has a set of final states. I don't see email as having anything like 
that kind of teleological goal-directedness, except at a very abstract 
level like it allows people to communicate with people.

To me it's much more like a component tool or platform. The point of 
social machines, it seems to me, is that whatever else they are, they 
are characterised by people getting together to do something. Email is 
something you would use for that in many circumstances, but it is not 
itself characterised by that. It's on the level of a mobile phone 
network, a railway system, or a social networking site, in my view. Once 
it starts to be used to achieve some kind of goal, then it becomes a 
component of a social machine.

Is my view.

Kieron


On 29/10/2013 10:10, Wendy Hall wrote:
> Hi
>
> I'm at dinner in Melbourne and the question has arisen - is email a social machine?
>
> My initial reaction was no, because email is not of the Web. But there are people here who are persuading me otherwise
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Wendy
>
> PS Apologies if this question is already answered in the SM classification work but I don't have all the information to hand
>
> Sent from my iPhone
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