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

[Markus Luczak-Roesch]

Hi.

I just wanted to add exactly this point wrt. wikipedia. There is no 
halting condition regarding the output.

But, the fact that makes wikipedia a social machine from my point of 
view is, that the people actually influence the technology by 
implementation of bots for example. And if a bot becomes part of the 
actual live system is subject to various social constraints because the 
community decides about whether it is appropriate. I do not see this in 
email communication where the only thing the community can influence is 
the actual end of the discussion by not replying to mails anymore.

Markus

On 29/10/2013 12:03, rt506 wrote:
> Good question, but does a social machine such as Wikipedia have a
> halting condition (unless we say the final state [which would never be
> achieved] is to document ask knowledge)?
>
> Ramine
>
>
> Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note
>
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Leslie Carr <lac at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> Date: 29/10/2013 10:54 (GMT+00:00)
> To: "tinati r. (rt506)" <rt506 at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> Cc: Hugh Glaser <hg at ecs.soton.ac.uk>,Kieron O'Hara
> <kmo at ecs.soton.ac.uk>,sociam-soton at ecs.soton.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: [Sociam-soton] Re: Is email a social machine?
>
>
> Does a mailing list have a halting condition? Can it ever finish its task?
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 29 Oct 2013, at 10:50, "rt506"
> <rt506 at ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:rt506 at ecs.soton.ac.uk>> wrote:
>
> I agrees with Les, however, if we talk about having an agenda/purpose,
> would a mailing list with a specific purpose be a social machine where
> email is one if the tools within the social machinery network?
>
> Ramine
>
>
> Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note
>
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Hugh Glaser <hg at ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:hg at ecs.soton.ac.uk>>
> Date: 29/10/2013 10:35 (GMT+00:00)
> To: Kieron O'Hara <kmo at ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:kmo at ecs.soton.ac.uk>>
> Cc: sociam-soton at ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:sociam-soton at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> Subject: [Sociam-soton] Re: Is email a social machine?
>
>
> Agreed.
> Is a crowbar a machine?
> Is steam power a machine?
> They might be loosely referred to as such in use, but to people studying
> statics and dynamics and dynamics they aren't.
>
> Hugh
> 023 8061 5652
>
> On 29 Oct 2013, at 10:27, "Kieron O'Hara"
> <kmo at ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:kmo at ecs.soton.ac.uk>> wrote:
>
>  > 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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-- 
------------------------------------------------
Markus Luczak-Rösch
Senior Research Fellow
Web and Internet Science Research Group (WAIS)
Electronics & Computer Science (ECS)
University of Southampton
email: M.Luczak-Rosch at soton.ac.uk
web: www.markus-luczak.de