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The Theory and Practice of Social Machines

  • Book
  • © 2019

Overview

Authors:
  1. Nigel Shadbolt

    1. Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

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  2. Kieron O’Hara

    1. Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

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  3. David De Roure

    1. Oxford eResearch Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

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  4. Wendy Hall

    1. Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

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  • Provides a comprehensive approach to technical research in the area, including analysing existing Social Machines and building new ones
  • Emphasises ethical dimensions (e.g. privacy) alongside the technical account
  • Introduces the reader to the foundations of the field
  • Valuable for social scientists who wish to understand technical developments in the area

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Social Networks (LNSN)

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
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  2. Characterising Social Machines

    • Nigel Shadbolt, Kieron O’Hara, David De Roure, Wendy Hall
    Pages 1-41

  3. Theory

    • Nigel Shadbolt, Kieron O’Hara, David De Roure, Wendy Hall
    Pages 43-102

  4. Practice

    • Nigel Shadbolt, Kieron O’Hara, David De Roure, Wendy Hall
    Pages 103-147

  5. Privacy, Trust and Ethical Issues

    • Nigel Shadbolt, Kieron O’Hara, David De Roure, Wendy Hall
    Pages 149-200

  6. The Future(s) of Social Machines: The Research Agenda

    • Nigel Shadbolt, Kieron O’Hara, David De Roure, Wendy Hall
    Pages 201-217

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 219-260
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Keywords

About this book

Social machines are a type of network connected by interactive digital devices made possible by the ubiquitous adoption of technologies such as the Internet, the smartphone, social media and the read/write World Wide Web, connecting people at scale to document situations, cooperate on tasks, exchange information, or even simply to play. Existing social processes may be scaled up, and new social processes enabled, to solve problems, augment reality, create new sources of value, and disrupt existing practice.


This book considers what talents one would need to understand or build a social machine, describes the state of the art, and speculates on the future, from the perspective of the EPSRC project SOCIAM – The Theory and Practice of Social Machines. The aim is to develop a set of tools and techniques for investigating, constructing and facilitating social machines, to enable us to narrow down pragmatically what is becoming a wide space, by asking ‘when willit be valuable to use these methods on a sociotechnical system?’ The systems for which the use of these methods adds value are social machines in which there is rich person-to-person communication, and where a large proportion of the machine’s behaviour is constituted by human interaction.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Nigel Shadbolt

  • Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Kieron O’Hara, Wendy Hall

  • Oxford eResearch Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    David De Roure

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