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

Tue Oct 29 12:53:44 GMT 2013

Well, consensus is boring, and you're right that we are unlikely to have 
one at the minute judging by the length of the thread, but there have 
been discussions of these terms within sociam which are well worth reading.

There's a very useful section in Elena and Max's Towards a 
Classification paper at the Rio workshop comparing social machines with 
related terms like social computation and CSC, while Dave R and Fausto's 
paper from the Web Science Royal Society gig a few years ago, which is 
called something like Programming the Social Computer, contains 
definitions of some relevant terms too. That predates sociam, but 
obviously Dave's views on this topic are not unimportant.

I think they are consistent across the papers, but that is a question 
probably worth following up to make sure. Either way, two important 
papers to start from in our exploration of these issues.

Kieron

On 29/10/2013 11:58, Darren Richardson wrote:
> Right, and this is where we need to see the fundamental difference between a machine, a computation, and a machine designed to run a computation.
>
> Is there consensus within the group as to the definition of the terms “social machine”, “social computation” and “social computer”? I doubt it.
>
> Darren..
>
> On 29 Oct 2013, at 11:24, Hugh Glaser <hg at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> This thread could be considered an interesting little social machine using email that has come into existence and will halt if (or when?!) the participants grow tired of it?
>>
>> I think halting conditions and task finishing are not an issue for machines.
>> Machines stop when they break or if the task they have has an endpoint or is finished.
>>
>> I have my favourite little gem about over-specification which involves halting.
>> In their brilliant paper setting out the von Neumann machine:
>> "PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION OF THE LOGICAL DESIGN OF AN ELECTRONIC COMPUTING INSTRUMENT
>> ARTHUR W. BURKS, HERMAN H. GOLDSTINE, JOHN VON NEUMANN”
>> https://github.com/warrenm/von-neumann-papers/blob/master/Logical%20design%20of%20an%20electronic%20computing%20instrument/Logical%20design%20of%20an%20electronic%20computing%20instrument.pdf
>>
>> the authors essentially describe every component of the modern computer (as I recall).
>> But it ends in the very last paragraph with a bit it got wrong, because they worried about stopping:
>>
>> "6.8.5. Finish signal. There is one further order that the control needs to execute. There should be some means by which the computer can signal to the operator when a computation has been concluded, or when the computation has reached a previously determined point. Hence an order is needed which will tell the computer to stop and to flash a light or ring a bell.”
>>
>> Many modern computers never deliberately stop, and certainly having a bell or a light is no requirement, and in my view is actually a detriment, which is why I am a mac user. :-)
>>
>>
>>
>> On 29 Oct 2013, at 11:03, rt506 <rt506 at ecs.soton.ac.uk> 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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>> --
>> Hugh
>> 023 8061 5652
>>
>>
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