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

[Leslie Carr]

It's more like a web observatory! (Let's start a new thread!)

Sent from my iPhone

> On 29 Oct 2013, at 13:21, "Hugh Glaser" <hg at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> I like.
> Looking from Google’s point of view, it is very like Zooniverse, etc.
> And if you look at email from the point of view of an employer providing it, things can look rather different too.
> 
>> On 29 Oct 2013, at 11:58, Kieron O'Hara <kmo at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> Not sure these are murky waters at all - I think you're simply correct 
>> to say what you say. Gmail's a social machine designed by Google, and 
>> it's their goals of surveillance and advertising that really count in 
>> the design.
>> 
>> Gmail may also be a component in other people's social machines, of 
>> course, where it will play a part in achieving another set of goals. If 
>> that didn't happen, no-one would use it and it wouldn't achieve Google's 
>> goals. So the design problem for Google is to create a system or service 
>> that (a) achieves their own goals, and (b) has enough functional 
>> capabilities that it can help others achieve their communication goals 
>> too, (c) without loading them up with too many obvious costs.
>> 
>> Kieron
>> 
>> 
>>> On 29/10/2013 11:34, Darren Richardson wrote:
>>> I suppose that would depend on what people mean by email. If they’re referring to the the nuts and bolts of the technology then I would certainly say it was not a social machine, merely a cog that can be used to build one. However, if they’re referring to a service like Gmail, then the waters are murkier.
>>> 
>>> Input: At least some of the correspondence of every internet connected person on the planet (If you don’t use Gmail, you’ve almost certainly sent an email to somebody who does!)
>>> Outputs:
>>>   For Google: Increased Ad revenue and better customer awareness
>>>   For the users: A free email service (I pay 69p a month for mine!)
>>>   For the advertisers: Increased revenue
>>> 
>>> This looks like a machine to me. It really depends on whether we include general purpose machines in our Social Machine definition or restrict it to only include machines that do social computation.
>>> 
>>> Darren..
>>> 
>>>> On 29 Oct 2013, at 10:35, Hugh Glaser <hg at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 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> 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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