Contropedia, and the question of analytically separating the medium and the m...INRIA - ENS Lyon
My presentation of the Contropedia project at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, at the occasion of the award of the Erasmus prize to the Wikipedia Community.
A long conference and a workshop that I gave (with Paul Girard) at the University of Coimbra in the framework of the project "The Importance of Being Digital". The theme of the conference was how digital methods help overcome several classic binary oppositions of traditional social sciences.
The conference I gave at the SPRU Freeman Friday Seminars at the University of Sussex (stirring quite a bit of controversy)
In the last few years, our societies have been confronted to a new kind of problems. Our planet – once so vast and unexplored – seems to have shrunk around us constraining our actions with its multiple ecological and economical fragilities. Welcome to the Anthropocene! After centuries spent in trying to rule the world, we suddenly realize how tiny is our kingdom and, as the air fill with CO2, how suffocating is its atmosphere. What’s worse, we find ourselves utterly unprepared to deal with the situation we have created. The more we strive to force the knots we tied, the more they seem to tighten around us. The knots that hold us cannot be slashed, but (and it’s our only hope) they might be untied. The fabric of our natural and social interdependencies is complex, but not impenetrable. And this is where social sciences may help, by hijacking one of the strongest forces of modernization (the proliferation of digital inscriptions) and turning it into a source of understanding. Turning inscriptions into traces, and following them as threads through the maze of collective life, we can try to unfold the complexity of our small world and learn to live with it.
A conference on how to engage the publics of sociotechnical controversies in the effort of controversy mapping.
I have been invited to give this conference at the 2012 4S conference on Science and Technology Studies (Copenhague - 18/10/12), at the 'Tactics of Issue Mapping' seminar of Goldsmith University (London - 26/10/12), at the Department of Media Studies of the University of Amsterdam (17/04/13) and at the Ecsite Conference on science centres and museums (Gothenburg - 08/06/13).
Contropedia, and the question of analytically separating the medium and the m...INRIA - ENS Lyon
My presentation of the Contropedia project at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, at the occasion of the award of the Erasmus prize to the Wikipedia Community.
A long conference and a workshop that I gave (with Paul Girard) at the University of Coimbra in the framework of the project "The Importance of Being Digital". The theme of the conference was how digital methods help overcome several classic binary oppositions of traditional social sciences.
The conference I gave at the SPRU Freeman Friday Seminars at the University of Sussex (stirring quite a bit of controversy)
In the last few years, our societies have been confronted to a new kind of problems. Our planet – once so vast and unexplored – seems to have shrunk around us constraining our actions with its multiple ecological and economical fragilities. Welcome to the Anthropocene! After centuries spent in trying to rule the world, we suddenly realize how tiny is our kingdom and, as the air fill with CO2, how suffocating is its atmosphere. What’s worse, we find ourselves utterly unprepared to deal with the situation we have created. The more we strive to force the knots we tied, the more they seem to tighten around us. The knots that hold us cannot be slashed, but (and it’s our only hope) they might be untied. The fabric of our natural and social interdependencies is complex, but not impenetrable. And this is where social sciences may help, by hijacking one of the strongest forces of modernization (the proliferation of digital inscriptions) and turning it into a source of understanding. Turning inscriptions into traces, and following them as threads through the maze of collective life, we can try to unfold the complexity of our small world and learn to live with it.
A conference on how to engage the publics of sociotechnical controversies in the effort of controversy mapping.
I have been invited to give this conference at the 2012 4S conference on Science and Technology Studies (Copenhague - 18/10/12), at the 'Tactics of Issue Mapping' seminar of Goldsmith University (London - 26/10/12), at the Department of Media Studies of the University of Amsterdam (17/04/13) and at the Ecsite Conference on science centres and museums (Gothenburg - 08/06/13).
A conference I gave at the Kings's College doctoral school with Mathieu Jacomy on the notion of social border and the advantage of adding continuity in social research through digital navigation.
The presentation I gave at the Digital Methods Initiative Summer School for the launch of the book "Issue Mapping for an Ageing Europe" by Richard Rogers, Natalia Sanchez and Aleksandra Kil.
Keynote speech at the Digitale Praxen conference at Frankfurt UniversityINRIA - ENS Lyon
We will discuss four misunderstandings often connected to use of digital traces:
1) the use of a notion of digital traces that is both too narrow and too ambitious;
2) the alternation of oblivion and paranoia on the conditions of digital traces' production;
3) the tendency to confuse digital and automatic;
4) the hope that the digital traces are easily clamped by conventional methods.
We will try to show than when these misunderstandings are avoided, digital methods can renew the vision of social sciences and help them to overcome the classic divide between qualitative and quantitative methods.
Mapping Experiences with Actor Network TheoryLiza Potts
My presentation from ATTW's annual conference. I talk about how we can better design for experiences if we first understand the context in which we are building products and services. This simple mapping system helps visualize these contexts.
Want more? Check out my book on social media and disaster, filled with more information on how to map networks using actor-network theory http://www.amazon.com/dp/0415817412
My slides from my 3-hour tutorial on mesoscale structures in networks from the 2016 Lake Como School on Complex Networks (http://ntmb.lakecomoschool.org/).
After my talk, Tiago Peixoto gave a talk on statistical inference of large-scale mesoscale structures in networks. His presentation, which takes a complementary perspective from mine, is available at the following website: https://speakerdeck.com/count0/statisical-inference-of-generative-network-models
This is a presentation I gave in a workshop on "Language, concepts, history" organized by historian Joanna Innes. It took place on Friday 4/22/16 in Somerville College, Oxford.
I was one of the only people present who was not from the humanities, so it was a rather different-than-usual audience and set of participants for me.
I drew some of these slides from other presentations to rather different audiences. I emphasized rather different parts of some of those slides, so I am not sure if the slides on their own give an accurate reflection of the difference between this presentation and some of my other ones.
I thought the presentation went rather well.
Evaluating Platforms for Community Sensemaking: Using the Case of the Kenyan ...COMRADES project
Vittorio Nespeca
TU Delft
V.Nespeca@tudelft.nl
Kenny Meesters
TU Delft
K.J.M.G.Meesters@tudelft.nl
Tina Comes
TU Delft
T.Comes@tudelft.nl
WiPe Paper – T12 - Designing for Resilience
Proceedings of the 15th ISCRAM Conference – Rochester, NY, USA May 2018
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324162897_Evaluating_Platforms_for_Community_Sensemaking_Using_the_Case_of_the_Kenyan_Elections_Vittorio_Nespeca
Feedback Effects Between Similarity And Social Influence In Online CommunitiesPaolo Massa
SoNet Research Meeting presentation
Feedback Effects Between Similarity And Social Influence In Online Communities.
Authors: David Crandall, Dan Cosley, Daniel Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, Siddharth Suri
Cornell University Ithaca, NY
2008 KDD: Proceeding of the 14th ACM KDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining
#citations at 2010/04/09 from Google Scholar:44
Presenter: Paolo Massa, SoNet group, http://sonet.fbk.eu
2009-JCMC-Discussion catalysts-Himelboim and SmithMarc Smith
This study addresses 3 research questions in the context of online political discussions:
What is the distribution of successful topic starting practices, what characterizes the content
of large thread-starting messages, and what is the source of that content? A 6-month
analysis of almost 40,000 authors in 20 political Usenet newsgroups identified authors
who received a disproportionate number of replies. We labeled these authors ‘‘discussion
catalysts.’’ Content analysis revealed that 95 percent of discussion catalysts’ messages
contained content imported from elsewhere on the web, about 2/3 from traditional news
organizations. We conclude that the flow of information from the content creators to the
readers and writers continues to be mediated by a few individuals who act as filters and
amplifiers.
Mathematical Models of the Spread of Diseases, Opinions, Information, and Mis...Mason Porter
This is my general-audience talk at DiscCon III (2021 WorldCon).
My talk overlapped with the Hugo Award ceremony, but the video will be posted later on the DisCon website for attendees who want to see it.
Doing Digital Methods: Some Recent Highlights from Winter and Summer SchoolsLiliana Bounegru
Talk given at the Digital Methods Winter School 2017 at the University of Amsterdam. It presents a selection of projects developed at the 2016 Digital Methods Winter and Summer Schools (www.digitalmethods.net).
GitHub as Transparency Device in Data Journalism, Open Data and Data ActivismLiliana Bounegru
Slides from presentation of research agenda around uses of GitHub in journalism at the Digital Methods Summer School 2015. More details here: http://lilianabounegru.org/2015/07/08/github-as-transparency-device-in-data-journalism-open-data-and-data-activism/
A conference I gave at the Kings's College doctoral school with Mathieu Jacomy on the notion of social border and the advantage of adding continuity in social research through digital navigation.
The presentation I gave at the Digital Methods Initiative Summer School for the launch of the book "Issue Mapping for an Ageing Europe" by Richard Rogers, Natalia Sanchez and Aleksandra Kil.
Keynote speech at the Digitale Praxen conference at Frankfurt UniversityINRIA - ENS Lyon
We will discuss four misunderstandings often connected to use of digital traces:
1) the use of a notion of digital traces that is both too narrow and too ambitious;
2) the alternation of oblivion and paranoia on the conditions of digital traces' production;
3) the tendency to confuse digital and automatic;
4) the hope that the digital traces are easily clamped by conventional methods.
We will try to show than when these misunderstandings are avoided, digital methods can renew the vision of social sciences and help them to overcome the classic divide between qualitative and quantitative methods.
Mapping Experiences with Actor Network TheoryLiza Potts
My presentation from ATTW's annual conference. I talk about how we can better design for experiences if we first understand the context in which we are building products and services. This simple mapping system helps visualize these contexts.
Want more? Check out my book on social media and disaster, filled with more information on how to map networks using actor-network theory http://www.amazon.com/dp/0415817412
My slides from my 3-hour tutorial on mesoscale structures in networks from the 2016 Lake Como School on Complex Networks (http://ntmb.lakecomoschool.org/).
After my talk, Tiago Peixoto gave a talk on statistical inference of large-scale mesoscale structures in networks. His presentation, which takes a complementary perspective from mine, is available at the following website: https://speakerdeck.com/count0/statisical-inference-of-generative-network-models
This is a presentation I gave in a workshop on "Language, concepts, history" organized by historian Joanna Innes. It took place on Friday 4/22/16 in Somerville College, Oxford.
I was one of the only people present who was not from the humanities, so it was a rather different-than-usual audience and set of participants for me.
I drew some of these slides from other presentations to rather different audiences. I emphasized rather different parts of some of those slides, so I am not sure if the slides on their own give an accurate reflection of the difference between this presentation and some of my other ones.
I thought the presentation went rather well.
Evaluating Platforms for Community Sensemaking: Using the Case of the Kenyan ...COMRADES project
Vittorio Nespeca
TU Delft
V.Nespeca@tudelft.nl
Kenny Meesters
TU Delft
K.J.M.G.Meesters@tudelft.nl
Tina Comes
TU Delft
T.Comes@tudelft.nl
WiPe Paper – T12 - Designing for Resilience
Proceedings of the 15th ISCRAM Conference – Rochester, NY, USA May 2018
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324162897_Evaluating_Platforms_for_Community_Sensemaking_Using_the_Case_of_the_Kenyan_Elections_Vittorio_Nespeca
Feedback Effects Between Similarity And Social Influence In Online CommunitiesPaolo Massa
SoNet Research Meeting presentation
Feedback Effects Between Similarity And Social Influence In Online Communities.
Authors: David Crandall, Dan Cosley, Daniel Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, Siddharth Suri
Cornell University Ithaca, NY
2008 KDD: Proceeding of the 14th ACM KDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining
#citations at 2010/04/09 from Google Scholar:44
Presenter: Paolo Massa, SoNet group, http://sonet.fbk.eu
2009-JCMC-Discussion catalysts-Himelboim and SmithMarc Smith
This study addresses 3 research questions in the context of online political discussions:
What is the distribution of successful topic starting practices, what characterizes the content
of large thread-starting messages, and what is the source of that content? A 6-month
analysis of almost 40,000 authors in 20 political Usenet newsgroups identified authors
who received a disproportionate number of replies. We labeled these authors ‘‘discussion
catalysts.’’ Content analysis revealed that 95 percent of discussion catalysts’ messages
contained content imported from elsewhere on the web, about 2/3 from traditional news
organizations. We conclude that the flow of information from the content creators to the
readers and writers continues to be mediated by a few individuals who act as filters and
amplifiers.
Mathematical Models of the Spread of Diseases, Opinions, Information, and Mis...Mason Porter
This is my general-audience talk at DiscCon III (2021 WorldCon).
My talk overlapped with the Hugo Award ceremony, but the video will be posted later on the DisCon website for attendees who want to see it.
Doing Digital Methods: Some Recent Highlights from Winter and Summer SchoolsLiliana Bounegru
Talk given at the Digital Methods Winter School 2017 at the University of Amsterdam. It presents a selection of projects developed at the 2016 Digital Methods Winter and Summer Schools (www.digitalmethods.net).
GitHub as Transparency Device in Data Journalism, Open Data and Data ActivismLiliana Bounegru
Slides from presentation of research agenda around uses of GitHub in journalism at the Digital Methods Summer School 2015. More details here: http://lilianabounegru.org/2015/07/08/github-as-transparency-device-in-data-journalism-open-data-and-data-activism/
What Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and digital methods can do for data journalis...Liliana Bounegru
Slides from a talk I gave at the University of Ghent on 21 October 2014 about how Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and digital methods can be used to study and inform data journalism.
Doing Social and Political Research in a Digital Age: An Introduction to Digi...Liliana Bounegru
Lecture given at the National Center of Competence in Research: Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century, 5 November 2015, Zürich University, Zürich, Switzerland
Mapping Issues with the Web: An Introduction to Digital MethodsJonathan Gray
Slides from talk on "Mapping Issues with the Web: An Introduction to Digital Methods" at Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University, 23rd September 2014. Further details at: http://jonathangray.org/2014/09/10/mapping-issues-with-web-columbia/
Neural Networks Models for Large Social SystemsSSA KPI
AACIMP 2010 Summer School lecture by Alexander Makarenko. "Applied Mathematics" stream. "General Tasks and Problems of Modelling of Social Systems. Problems and Models in Sustainable Development" course. Part 3.
More info at http://summerschool.ssa.org.ua
Fundamental Characteristics of a Complex Systemijtsrd
In this review basic concepts are presented, as well as the fundamental characteristics related to Complexity and some examples of their applications in organizations. It is an interdisciplinary area that is becoming increasingly important in the relentless pursuit of science to expand the limits of our knowledge and the laws governing the phenomena of nature. The main argument of this paper is that the understanding and consequent application of such approaches in the organizational process, provides an improvement in the decision making. Celso Luis Levada | Osvaldo Missiato | Antonio Luis Ferrari | Miriam De Magalhães Oliveira Levada "Fundamental Characteristics of a Complex System" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-3 | Issue-6 , October 2019, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd28098.pdf Paper URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/engineering/other/28098/fundamental-characteristics-of-a-complex-system/celso-luis-levada
Complexity theory and public management a ‘becoming’ field LynellBull52
Complexity theory and public management: a ‘becoming’ field
Since the special edition of Public Management Review on ‘Complexity Theory and Public Management’
in 2008 (Volume 10 (3)), co-edited by Geert Teisman and Erik-Hans Klijn, academic interest in complexity
theory, and how it might be used to understand the world and inform design and intervention in the
public policy/public management field, has grown and matured. The inspiration for this special issue
arose out of intensive interactions among interested scholars in conference panels (at American Society
for Public Administration, International Research Society for Public Management, and the Challenges of
Making Public Administration and Complexity Theory group) over the past few years and the realization
that a ‘stock-taking’ was required. While many public management scholars knew a little bit about
complexity – and some knew a lot – there was still no consensus about the contribution complexity
theory could or could not make to theory and practice. While we did not achieve consensus this time
around, the papers selected for this edition provide a picture of where we are and where scholars in this
field think we should go, and some examples of the most promising routes to get there. Before
summarizing these findings, we provide a brief overview of where we have come from and why we are
still a ‘becoming’ field.
Challenging fundamental assumptions
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century sciences which developed beneath the umbra of Newtonian
theories, embedded some pervasive assumptions which might be crudely summarized as (1)
relationships between individual components of any system can be understood by isolating the
interacting parts, (2) there is a predictability to the relationship among the parts, and (3) the result of
interactions and the working whole might eventually be understood by simply summing the parts. So in
much the same way as the expert clockmaker might be able to design, build, disassemble, and modify a
clock, understanding the individual parts and how they fit together leads to understanding the
functioning whole and the capability to replicate it precisely as required. This paradigm is dominated by
mechanical metaphors and leads to an assumption that the sum of the parts equals the whole.
Dissatisfaction with the limitations of mechanical explanations led to more sophisticated models which
were better at explaining the observed behaviour, initially of the physical world, and then increasingly
the biological, ecological, and social worlds (e.g. Byrne 1998; Cilliers 1998; Holland 1995; Kauffman
1993; Prigogine 1978; Prigogine and Stengers 1984; Stacey 1993; Waldrop 1992). Such modelling offered
new ontological insights about the nature of our world and the way it behaves. This is summed up
briefly by saying that there are recursive, ongoing non-linear interactions between the elements that
make up the whole a ...
SPECIAL ISSUE CRITICAL REALISM IN IS RESEARCHCRITICAL RE.docxsusanschei
SPECIAL ISSUE: CRITICAL REALISM IN IS RESEARCH
CRITICAL REALISM IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH
John Mingers
Kent Business School, University of Kent,
Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ UNITED KINGDOM {[email protected]}
Alistair Mutch
Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street,
Nottingham NG1 4BU UNITED KINGDOM {[email protected]}
Leslie Willcocks
London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street,
London WC2A 2AE UNITED KINGDOM {[email protected]}
Introduction
There has been growing interest in a range of disciplines
(Ackroyd and Fleetwood 2000; Danermark et al. 2002;
Fleetwood 1999; Fleetwood and Ackroyd 2004), not least
information systems (Dobson 2001; Longshore Smith 2006;
Mingers 2004b; Mutch 2010b; Volkoff et al. 2007; Wynn and
Williams 2012) in ideas derived from the philosophical tradi-
tion of critical realism. Critical realism offers exciting pros-
pects in shifting attention toward the real problems that we
face and their underlying causes, and away from a focus on
data and methods of analysis. As such, it offers a robust
framework for the use of a variety of methods in order to gain
a better understanding of the meaning and significance of
information systems in the contemporary world.
Although the term critical realism has been used in a number
of different traditions, we are primarily concerned with that
developed from the foundational work of Roy Bhaskar in the
philosophy of science, later extended in the social arena by
authors such as Archer and Sayer (Archer et al. 1998; Bhaskar
1978, 1979; Mingers 2004b; Sayer 2000). In this tradition,
the benefits of CR are seen as:
• CR defends a strongly realist ontology that there is an
existing, causally efficacious, world independent of our
knowledge. It defends this against both classical positi-
vism that would reduce the world to that which can be
empirically observed and measured, and the various
forms of constructivism that would reduce the world to
our human knowledge of it. Hence it is realist.
• CR recognizes that our access to this world is in fact
limited and always mediated by our perceptual and theo-
retical lenses. It accepts epistemic relativity (that knowl-
edge is always local and historical), but not judgmental
relativity (that all viewpoints must be equally valid).
Hence it is critical in a Kantian sense.
• CR accepts the existence of different types of objects of
knowledge—physical, social, and conceptual—which
have different ontological and epistemological charac-
teristics. They therefore require a range of different
research methods and methodologies to access them.
Since a particular object of research may well have
different characteristics, it is likely that a mixed-method
research strategy (i.e., a variety of methods in the same
research study) will be necessary and CR supports this.
In this introduction, we will first introduce the basic concepts
of critical realism as a philosophy of science.
Do Intelligent Machines, Natural or Artificial, Really Need Emotions?Aaron Sloman
(Updated on 14 Jan 2014 -- with substantial revisions.)
Many people believe that emotions are required for intelligence. I argue that this is mostly based on (a) wishful thinking and (b) a failure adequately to analyse the variety of types of affective states and processes that can arise in different sorts of architectures produced by biological evolution or required for artificial systems. This work is a development of ideas presented by Herbert Simon in the 1960s in his 'Motivational and emotional controls of cognition'.
A conference I gave at the Amsterdam Digital Methods Summer School. It presents Heatgraph a new tool of the médialab using the example of the article "Intangible Cultural Heritage Webs: comparing national networks with digital methods".
This slide is special for master students (MIBS & MIFB) in UUM. Also useful for readers who are interested in the topic of contemporary Islamic banking.
Exploiting Artificial Intelligence for Empowering Researchers and Faculty, In...Dr. Vinod Kumar Kanvaria
Exploiting Artificial Intelligence for Empowering Researchers and Faculty,
International FDP on Fundamentals of Research in Social Sciences
at Integral University, Lucknow, 06.06.2024
By Dr. Vinod Kumar Kanvaria
A Strategic Approach: GenAI in EducationPeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
Macroeconomics- Movie Location
This will be used as part of your Personal Professional Portfolio once graded.
Objective:
Prepare a presentation or a paper using research, basic comparative analysis, data organization and application of economic information. You will make an informed assessment of an economic climate outside of the United States to accomplish an entertainment industry objective.
How to Make a Field invisible in Odoo 17Celine George
It is possible to hide or invisible some fields in odoo. Commonly using “invisible” attribute in the field definition to invisible the fields. This slide will show how to make a field invisible in odoo 17.
Introduction to AI for Nonprofits with Tapp NetworkTechSoup
Dive into the world of AI! Experts Jon Hill and Tareq Monaur will guide you through AI's role in enhancing nonprofit websites and basic marketing strategies, making it easy to understand and apply.
A review of the growth of the Israel Genealogy Research Association Database Collection for the last 12 months. Our collection is now passed the 3 million mark and still growing. See which archives have contributed the most. See the different types of records we have, and which years have had records added. You can also see what we have for the future.
Safalta Digital marketing institute in Noida, provide complete applications that encompass a huge range of virtual advertising and marketing additives, which includes search engine optimization, virtual communication advertising, pay-per-click on marketing, content material advertising, internet analytics, and greater. These university courses are designed for students who possess a comprehensive understanding of virtual marketing strategies and attributes.Safalta Digital Marketing Institute in Noida is a first choice for young individuals or students who are looking to start their careers in the field of digital advertising. The institute gives specialized courses designed and certification.
for beginners, providing thorough training in areas such as SEO, digital communication marketing, and PPC training in Noida. After finishing the program, students receive the certifications recognised by top different universitie, setting a strong foundation for a successful career in digital marketing.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...
Dancing Together: the Fluidification of the Modern Mind
1. Dancing Together
the Fluidification of the Modern Mind
Tommaso Venturini
Lecturer, Digital Humanities Dept. King's College London
Chercheur affilié, médialab Sciences Po Paris
tommaso.venturini@kcl.ac.uk
2. The way we teach dancing
is not the way we dance
3. Historians cared about sequence
and order. Sociologist didn’t. Why?
(p. 4)
This grew out of my idea that the
social process was itself narratively
organised. I was insistent that this
narrative organisation to be real; that
it, that it be inherent in the social
process itself and nor merely in our
talking about that process (p. 289)
Abbott, A. (2001)
Time Matters
Chicago: University Press.
1. Talking about time
4. Anyone who ventures a projection, or imagines how a social
dynamic—an epidemic, war, or migration—would unfold is running
some model. But typically, it is an implicit model in which the
assumptions are hidden, their internal consistency is untested, their
logical consequences are unknown, and their relation to data is
unknown...
In explicit models, assumptions are laid out in detail, so we can study
exactly what they entail. On these assumptions, this sort of thing
happens. When you alter the assumptions that is what happens.
Epstein, J. M. (2008). Why model?
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulations, 11(4),
2. Talking about models
6. This conference will be about
1. The temporal dynamics of collective
phenomena
2. The modeling of the such dynamics
What are we talking about
7. Three types of social models
Variation Circulation Interaction
Examples
Economic and ecologic
equilibria
Epidemics and routing Agent-based models
Model
Relations defined by a
set of equations,
computed recursively
and in parallel until an
equilibrium is reached.
Flow of entities moving
through a grid of
connections (generally in
the form of a complex
network).
Multitude of local
exchanges among
calculating agents
(evolution cannot be
analytically computed).
Change
Nothing new can be
introduced or created
and components cannot
acquire new properties
or alter associations.
The only type of change
admitted is the increase
or decrease of
quantities.
Such systems admit
existence of mobile
components but both the
shape of the network
and the rules
coordinating the
movements are fixed
from the beginning.
The dynamism of these
systems derives from a
restricted and constant
set of interaction rules.
Transformation does not
concerns the agents’
nature or the system’s
architecture.
8. An example of agent based model
Schelling, T. (1971). Dynamic Models of Segregation.
Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 1 (May), 143–186
9. An example of agent based model
Schelling, T. (1971). Dynamic Models of Segregation.
Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 1 (May), 143–186
1. Opposition between individual strategies and collective results
2. Social existence framed as a relation between
local/individual interactions & global/collective structures
11. The ant framing
Thomas Hobbes, 1651
The Leviathan
Merian & Jonston, 1718
Folio Ants, Clony, Nest, Insects
12. Another example of agent based
model
Khuong et al. (2016). Stigmergic construction and topochemical
13. The colony is full of patterns and regularities and
balanced proportions among different activities, with
maintenance and repair and exploration and even
mobilization for emergencies. But no individual ant
knows whether there are too few or too many ants
exploring for food or rebuilding after a thunderstorm
or helping to carry in the carcass of a beetle.
Each ant lives in its own little world, responding to
the other ants in its immediate environment and
responding to signals of which it does not know the
origin. Why the system works as it does, and as
effectively as it does, is a dynamic problem of social
and genetic evolution.
micromotives / macrobehaviours
Schelling, T. C. (1978)
Micromotives and
Macrobehaviours
Norton & Company
15. A spatial framing
of collective change
Conceptually
• Binary, micro and macro
attractors vacuums all graduations
of speed between them.
• Rigid, entities cannot change
tempo (they are either movable
actors or fixed structures).
• Topological, implicit assumption
that local changes faster than
global.
Methodologically
• Simpler dynamics where change is
confined to local circuits and
stability to global structures.
• Artificial simulations where actors
and structures can be separated
by construction.
Disadvantages of misusing the micro/macro framing
17. Revolutions or situations of structural change, e.g.
• moments in which a new species transforms an ecological environment
(Levins, 1968; Gordon, 2011);
• an innovation ‘creatively destroy’ an industrial market
(Schumpeter, 1976);
• a compromise is proposed to defuse with a social crisis
(Callon, Lascoumes & Barthe, 2009).
Force our attention to shift
• from the distinction between local interactions and global structures
• to the interaction between things changing quickly and things changing
slowly
A temporal framing
of collective change
18. All enquiry in the field of the social sciences involves the abstraction,
generalisation and formalisation that are associated with many forms of tabular
presentation... Since the table is essentially a graphic (and frequently a literate
device), its fixed two dimensional character may well simplify the reality of oral
communication beyond reasonable recognition, and hence decrease rather than
increase understanding (p. 52, 53)
One of the features of the graphic mode is the tendency to arrange terms in
(linear) rows and (hierarchical) columns in such a way that each item is allocated
a single position, where it stands in a definite, permanent, and unambiguous
relationship to the others (p. 68)
The result is often to freeze a contextual statement into a system of permanent
oppositions, an outcome that may simplify reality for the observes but often at the
expense of a real understanding of the actor’s frame of reference. And to shift
frames of reference and regard such tables as models of the camshaft behind the
jigsaw is to mistake metaphor for mechanism (p. 73)
Jack Goody,(1977). The Domestication of the Savage Mind.
Cambridge: University Press.
19. Tables
Luc Boltanski (1973).
L’espace positionnel : multiplicité des
positions institutionnelles et habitus de classe.
Revue Française de Sociologie, 14(1)
20. Leonhard Euler, 1736
Solutio problematis ad geometriam situs pertinentis
from a circulation network to positions table
21. Paradoxically (for a mode of study so intently focused upon
processuality), relational sociology has the greatest difficulty in
analyzing, not the structural features of static networks, whether
these be cultural, social structural, or social psychological, but rather,
the dynamic processes that transform those matrices of transactions
in some fashion. Even studies of “processes-in-relations” too often
privilege spatiality (or topological location) over temporality and
narrative unfolding (p. 305).
Mustafa Emirbayer (1997). Manifesto for a Relational Sociology
American Journal of Sociology, 103(2), 281–317
A topological approach
to modeling change
23. Studying change in Wikipedia
Viegas, F. B., Wattenberg, M., Kriss, J., & Van Ham, F. (2007).
Talk before you type: Coordination in Wikipedia.
In 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
http://hint.fm/projects/historyflow
24. Studying change in Wikipedia
Borra E., Weltevrede E., Ciuccarelli P., Kaltenbrunner A. ... Venturini T. (2015)
Societal Controversies in Wikipedia Articles.
Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
www.contropedia.net/demo
29. One Flat Thing, reproduced
1. Shifts the attention
• away from the distinction between local interaction and global
structures (the micro/macro divide)...
• ... to the processes of slowing down and speeding up; .
2. Captures
• Repetition and variation
Gabriel Tarde, Les lois de l'imitation, 1890
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and repetition, 1968
• Sequence (before and after) and coordination (at the same
time)
3. Visualizes change by
• Augmentation instead of aggregation
• View change by changing views
1 How many of you can dance? How many of you can really dance?
Dancing is often taught as an ensemble of rules that constraints the movement
Yet such rules are only a simplification. While very convenient in teaching how to dance, no one would seriously say that they provide an accurate description of what dancing is (not for ballroom dancing and even less so for modern ballet).
Those who dance professionally do not rely so much on rules as on a complex systems of cues that allows the dancing partners to coordinate the movement and achieve a harmonious collective result.
The way we teach dancing is not the way in which we dance and even less so the way in complex choreographies are organized
In this conference, I will argue that this difference is a good metaphor of the current state of sociological investigation of collective dynamics: the way we analyze collective change is profoundly different from the way in which collective change is handled by social actors themselves.
This is, I am aware of it, a very bold (pompous even) claim and should be qualified
The first qualification is that this conference will concern specifically the temporal aspects of social phenomena. Collective life can, of course be studied under many different angles. Time is only one of them – and it is not always the most important. However, I will argue with Andrew Abbott (and many others) that time is a dimension that is often forgotten by social analysis.
And here comes the second qualification, because I don’t think that it is fair to say social sciences have too often forgotten time. On the contrary, I would say, social sciences have been pretty good at narrating collective dynamics. What they have rather lack are specific effort to model social change. By modelling I refer to an explicit and formalized description (as opposed to a more qualitative report).
A story VS the model of a story
In this conference therefore I will specifically talk about. I know this sounds terribly boring but I believe that it is from this reflection that the new generation of digital methods (the one that we will use in the summer school of 2036) will come from…
… and I also promise that I will show a lot of cool videos.
But first, more boring stuff. Let me briefly introduce you to the 3 main types of social models.
What do you think they have in common?
What I will argument is that the one thing that these very different type of models has in common is that they all constrain time in a topological framing.
To explain what I mean, let me give you the example of one of the most famous agent based model. The model of urban segregation introduced in 1971 by Nobel Prize winner, Thomas Schelling.
1 Schelling's model residential segregation.mp4
Two things should be understood about this model:
The counter-intuitive relation between individual strategies (the fact that everyone would desire to live in a multi-ethnic neighborhood) and collective results (the very clear-cut segregation obtained at the equilibrium).
The way in which the whole question of social existence is framed as a relation between local/individual interactions and global/collective structures
This framing is often referred to as the micro/macro framing.
and the metaphor that is recurrently used is that of ants and ants’ nest
Ants are presented as social insects capable of building large and complex global structures (such as their nest) while processing information only at a local scale (through the chemical pheromones that they leave and encounters).
Here is another example of agent-based model in which the global construction on the nest is obtained through local rules of interaction.
2 Theraulaz Ants.mov
Thomas Schelling himself use this metaphor in a very explicit way in his famous book on “micromotives and macrobehaviours).
This strategy has then been taken up by the greatest majority of modelling efforts and though it is undeniably efficient, it is has the disadvantage of constraining time in a topological framing.
By “topological” here I do not mean “geographical”. I specifically refer to the projection of collective phenomena on micro-interactions and macro-structures, conceived spatially as layers or levels.
To be sure, the micro/macro framing has many advantages. In collective life, not everything changes at the same time and it is often convenient to take some things as settled, in order to highlight faster transformations.
This simplification, however, is only useful as long as we use it for what it is: precisely a simplification that we employ (for the sake of simplicity) to disregard (momentarily) some of the slower changes.
But convenient as it is the micro/macro framing should never be reified, because its reification has several disadvantages both from a conceptual and a methodological point of view.
When reified the micro/macro divide traps our understanding of social phenomena in a completely artificial framing, in which actors move against a static background, like fishes in a plastic aquarium. The oceans of collective life are much richer and more interesting.
3 BBC Blue Planet Ep6 Coral CUT.mp4
Through the expedient of time-lapse (the acceleration speed at which he shows us the image of the reef), the great British documentarist David Attenborough remind us that the corals are are not a static background for the interactions of the fishes, they not minerals or plant, but animals that move, hunt and fight.
The same is true for social institutions: they are not given once and for all. They change and sometime they can change as quickly as the interactions that they host.
And as soon as we consider the situation of structural change where old institutions dissolve and new arrangements crystallize, the micro-macro become untenable and we are forced to shift our attention - from the distinction between local interactions and global structures- to the interaction between things changing quickly and things changing slowly
To understand more clearly the topological nature of the micro/macro framing and the specific way in which it translates temporal dynamics, it is interesting to consider where this framing comes from.
This question has been thoroughly investigated by Jack Goody, who in his famous book “The Domestication of the Savage Mind” described the way in which the use of the table has transformed our way of understanding collective life.
But also the way in which collective life itself is organized.
Tables are intellectual technologies whose very aim is to provide a systematic and simplified understanding of different phenomena through a spatial arrangement.
Here you see a sundial one of the earliest techniques for turning space into space.
And here you see an example of how tables are used in social sciences to classify individuals into categories. The example is take from an article of Luc Boltansky and I’ve chosen in because through the separation between rows (corresponding to the individuals) and columns (corresponding to social fields) it clearly illustrates the micro/macro framing that I described above.
And such tendency to turn time into space, dynamics into arrangement, is common to many other ways of formalizing collective change. Think, for example, at the paper who founded graph mathematics and the way in which Euler translated a question of circulation and routing (“how to walk through all the neighborhoods of the city of Konigsberg without ever crossing the same bridge twice) into a table of connection.
To be sure, this translation has been extremely fertile, but it also had the disadvantage to privilege space over type. As lamented by Mustafa Emirbayer.
In the next days I will give two tutorials of Gephi a tool to visualize and analyze networks developed in the médialab of Sciences Po, where I used to work.
In a decade, this tool has replaced all previous software for network analysis. There are different reasons for this, but one (I believe) is its superior graphical interface.
And, in particular the way, in which it shows force-vector spatialisation (instead of just showing its results as most all pieces of software do)
Here is another example of a very influent project that focused directly on time.
This project inspired another project to which I contributed and that has been spearheaded by Eric Borra and Esther Weltevrede here at the Digital Methods Initiative
And here is a similar project that we developed at the médialab on the amendments of French laws.
And finally a project by Ben Fry to visualize the different versions of Charles Darwin’s book on “The Origin of Species”.
What these three projects have in common is their effort to produce a sort of visual versioning of collective phenomena. And what is interesting about this versioning approach is that it begins to distance itself from the traditional logic of the micro/macro divide.
But these three projects still have significant limitations:
In the fact that they are still incapable to handle radical structural change (ex. when laws a passed that change the way in which laws are passed)
In the fact that they still heavily rely on topological visualization (but see the experimental visualization of the network of amendments co-signature)
But I have found a project that goes even further in respecting the temporal nature of collective phenomena, while subjecting them to a formal description
For (remember!) our problem is to model collective change, not just narrate it.
It’s a project from Ohio State University and it aims at formalizing a very beautiful (and complex) choreography by William Forsythe, entitled “One Flat Thing, reproduced”
This incredible project (which is much richer than what I have show) illustrates three feature of what could be a collective modeling assuming a temporal instead of topological framing.