dhARC Workshop, TORCH, Oxford UK, 13 Jun 2014

1. David De Roure
Scholarly Social Machines

2. A revolutionary idea…
Open Science!
rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org

3. Overview
1. Shifts in Scholarly Practice
2. Research Objects
3. Social Machines

4. The Big Picture
More people
Moremachines
Big Data
Big Compute
Conventional
Computation
“Big Social”
Social Networks
e-infrastructure
Online R&D
(Science
2.0)
@dder
Social
Machines

5. Edwards, P. N., et al. (2013) Knowledge Infrastructures: Intellectual Frameworks and
Research Challenges. Ann Arbor: Deep Blue. http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/97552

6. ChristineBorgman

7. Pip
Willcox

8. F i r s t

10. New Social Process
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/series/reading-the-riots

11. Interdisciplinary and “in the wild”
In it not on it Pull not Push

12. www.zooniverse.org

13. Scientists
Talk
Forum
Image
Classification
data reduction
Citizen Scientists

14. http://www.scilogs.com/eresearch/pages-of-history/ David De Roure

15. http://www.scilogs.com/eresearch/pages-of-history/DavidDeRoure
9. Write for many read by few

16. data
method
script
program
workflow
model
protocol
…

17. Research Objects
Computational
Research Objects
The Evolution of myExperiment
Workflows
Packs
OAI
ORE
W3CPROV
Social Objects

18. The R Dimensions
Research Objects facilitate research that is
reproducible, repeatable, replicable, reusable,
referenceable, retrievable, reviewable, replayable,
re-interpretable, reprocessable, recomposable,
reconstructable, repurposable, reliable,
respectful, reputable, revealable, recoverable,
restorable, reparable, refreshable?”
@dder 14 April 2014
sci method
access
understand
new use
social
curation
Research
Object
Principles

19. A computationally-
enabled sense-making
network of expertise,
data, software,
models and narratives
Iain Buchan

20. Real life is and must be full of all kinds of social
constraint – the very processes from which society
arises. Computers can help if we use them to
create abstract social machines on the Web:
processes in which the people do the creative work
and the machine does the administration... The
stage is set for an evolutionary growth of new
social engines. The ability to create new forms of
social process would be given to the world at large,
and development would be rapid.
Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999 (pp. 172–175)
Social Machines

21. SOCIAM: The Theory and Practice of Social Machines is funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
(EPSRC) under grant number EPJ017728/1 and comprises the Universities of Southampton, Oxford and Edinburgh. See sociam.org

22. “Yet Wikipedia and its stated ambition to “compile the sum of all
human knowledge” are in trouble. The volunteer workforce that
built the project’s flagship, the English-language Wikipedia—and
must defend it against vandalism, hoaxes, and manipulation—
has shrunk by more than a third since 2007 and is still shrinking…
The main source of those problems is not mysterious. The loose
collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent
male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive
atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase
participation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage…”
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/

23. http://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/Social_Machines

24. The Yongle Encyclopedia
(simplified Chinese: 永乐大
典; traditional Chinese: 永樂
大典; pinyin: Yǒnglè
Dàdiǎn; literally The Great
Canon or Vast Documents
of the Yongle Era) was a
Chinese compilation of
information commissioned
by the Ming Dynasty
emperor Yongle in 1403
and completed by 1408. It
was the world's largest
known general
encyclopedia at its time,
unsurpassed for six
centuries.
http://yongledadian.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/volume/f0a4265c-c914-42fb-8a52-0eefc44cfa2a
Over two thousand scholars
worked on the project under the
direction of the Yongle Emperor,
who reigned from 1402 to 1424.
The scholars incorporated 8,000
texts from ancient times through
the early Ming Dynasty. Many
subjects were covered, including
agriculture, art, astronomy, drama,
geology, history, literature,
medicine, natural sciences, religion
and technology, as well as
descriptions of unusual natural
events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongle_Encyclopedia

25. Scholarly
Machines
EcosystemDavid De Roure, JCDL 2013

26. RichardO’Bierne

28. Stories within
Social Machines
Stories about Social Machines
Social
Machines for
stories
Now we consider...
SOCIAL MACHINES AS STORIES

29. STORYTELLING AS A STETHOSCOPE
FOR SOCIAL MACHINES
1. Sociality through storytelling potential
and realization
2. Sustainability through reactivity and
interactivity
3. Emergence through collaborative
authorship and mixed authority
Zooniverse is a highly
storified Social Machine
Facebook doesn’t allow
for improvisation
Wikipedia assigns
authority rights rigidly
Ségolène Tarte, David De Roure and Pip
Willcox, (2014). Working out the plot: the role
of stories in social machines. 2nd International
Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Social
Machines http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/ora:8033

30. 1. Shifts in scholarship – crowd and cloud?
– A “turn” or ongoing transformation?
2. Is innovation constrained?
– Don’t retrofit digital, think post-digital
– Social Machines for Open Innovation,
Crowd Funding
3. Think Social Machines
– New social processes at the scale of the
population, created by citizens
– Can you view your projects as social machines?

31. Thanks to Christine Borgman, Iain Buchan, Richard O'Beirne,
Pip Willcox, FORCE11, myExperiment, SOCIAM and Smart Society
SOCIAM: The Theory and Practice of Social Machines is funded by the UK Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant number EPJ017728/1 and comprises the Universities of
Southampton, Oxford and Edinburgh. See sociam.org
david.deroure@oerc.ox.ac.uk
www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/people/dder
@dder

32. www.oerc.ox.ac.uk
david.deroure@oerc.ox.ac.uk
@dder