The SOCIAM project aims to understand and develop social machines over 5 years with £6.15M in funding. Social machines harness human and computational resources to solve problems at scale. The project will explore how to design social computations and curate data to support them, while ensuring privacy, accountability and trust. It will build social machines for health, transport and policing using open data. An observatory will monitor social machines to understand their evolution and impacts. The goal is to understand how to coordinate large numbers of people through social machines to address important problems.
e-Research and the Demise of the Scholarly ArticleDavid De Roure
Innovations 2013 - e-Science, we-Science and the latest evolutions in e-publishing. STM International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers. 4th December 2013, Congress Centre, Great Russell Street, London, UK.
e-Research and the Demise of the Scholarly ArticleDavid De Roure
Innovations 2013 - e-Science, we-Science and the latest evolutions in e-publishing. STM International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers. 4th December 2013, Congress Centre, Great Russell Street, London, UK.
Keynote talk at the Web Science Summer School, Singapore, 8 December 2014. Today we see the rise of Social Machines, like Twitter, Wikipedia and Galaxy Zoo—where communities identify and solve their own problems, harnessing commitment, local knowledge and embedded skills, without having to rely on experts or governments.
The Social Machines paradigm provides a lens onto the interacting sociotechnical systems of our hybrid digital-physical world, citizen-centric and at scale—emphasising empowerment and sociality in a world of pervasive technology adoption and automation.
This talk will present the Social Machines paradigm as an approach to social media analytics and a rethinking of our scholarly practices and knowledge infrastructure.
Short paper presentation at the The 1st International Digital Libraries for Musicology workshop (DLfM 2014) 12TH SEPTEMBER 2014 (FULL DAY), LONDON, UK in conjunction with the ACM/IEEE Digital Libraries conference 2014.
"Social Innovation Hacktivism: from here to assemblages"
My slides from the First International Workshop on Social Innovation and Social Media (SISoM 2011), July, 21 2011, Barcelona, Spain
http://www.sites.google.com/site/sisom2011/
Keynote talk for NCRM Stream Analytics workshop, 19 January 2017, Manchester.
My talk is called "New and Emerging Forms of Data: Past, Present, and Future” and I will be giving a perspective from my role as one of the ESRC Strategic Advisers for Data Resources, in which I was responsible for new and emerging forms of data and realtime analytics. The talk also includes some of the current work in the Oxford e-Research Centre on Social Machines (the SOCIAM project) and an introduction to the PETRAS Internet of Things project.
The talk raises a number of important issues looking ahead, including massive scale of data that is already being supplied by Internet of Things, the implications of automation in our research, reproducibility and confidence in research results. I will also ask, how can the new forms of data and new research methods enable social scientists to work in new ways, and can we move on from the dependence on the traditional investment in longitudinal studies?
Blocked by YouTube - Unseen digital intermediation for social imaginaries in ...University of Sydney
YouTube is one of the most globally utilised online content sharing sites, enabling new commercial enterprise, education opportunities and facilities for vernacular creativity (Burgess, 2006). Its user engagement demonstrates significant capacity to develop online communities, alongside its arguably more popular use as a distribution platform to monetise one’s branded self (Senft, 2013). However, as a subset of Alphabet Incorporated, its access is often restricted by governments of Asian Pacific countries who disagree with the ideology of the business. Despite this, online communities thrive in these countries, bringing into question the sorts of augmentations used by its participants. This article reframes the discussion beyond restrictive regulation to focus on the DIY approach (augmentation) of community building through the use of hidden infrastructures (algorithms). This comparative study of key YouTube channels in several Asia Pacific countries highlights the sorts of techniques that bypass limiting infrastructures to boost online community engagement and growth. Lastly, this article reframes the significance of digital intermediation to highlight the opportunities key agents contribute to strengthening social imaginaries within the Asia Pacific region.
Keynote talk at the Web Science Summer School, Singapore, 8 December 2014. Today we see the rise of Social Machines, like Twitter, Wikipedia and Galaxy Zoo—where communities identify and solve their own problems, harnessing commitment, local knowledge and embedded skills, without having to rely on experts or governments.
The Social Machines paradigm provides a lens onto the interacting sociotechnical systems of our hybrid digital-physical world, citizen-centric and at scale—emphasising empowerment and sociality in a world of pervasive technology adoption and automation.
This talk will present the Social Machines paradigm as an approach to social media analytics and a rethinking of our scholarly practices and knowledge infrastructure.
Short paper presentation at the The 1st International Digital Libraries for Musicology workshop (DLfM 2014) 12TH SEPTEMBER 2014 (FULL DAY), LONDON, UK in conjunction with the ACM/IEEE Digital Libraries conference 2014.
"Social Innovation Hacktivism: from here to assemblages"
My slides from the First International Workshop on Social Innovation and Social Media (SISoM 2011), July, 21 2011, Barcelona, Spain
http://www.sites.google.com/site/sisom2011/
Keynote talk for NCRM Stream Analytics workshop, 19 January 2017, Manchester.
My talk is called "New and Emerging Forms of Data: Past, Present, and Future” and I will be giving a perspective from my role as one of the ESRC Strategic Advisers for Data Resources, in which I was responsible for new and emerging forms of data and realtime analytics. The talk also includes some of the current work in the Oxford e-Research Centre on Social Machines (the SOCIAM project) and an introduction to the PETRAS Internet of Things project.
The talk raises a number of important issues looking ahead, including massive scale of data that is already being supplied by Internet of Things, the implications of automation in our research, reproducibility and confidence in research results. I will also ask, how can the new forms of data and new research methods enable social scientists to work in new ways, and can we move on from the dependence on the traditional investment in longitudinal studies?
Blocked by YouTube - Unseen digital intermediation for social imaginaries in ...University of Sydney
YouTube is one of the most globally utilised online content sharing sites, enabling new commercial enterprise, education opportunities and facilities for vernacular creativity (Burgess, 2006). Its user engagement demonstrates significant capacity to develop online communities, alongside its arguably more popular use as a distribution platform to monetise one’s branded self (Senft, 2013). However, as a subset of Alphabet Incorporated, its access is often restricted by governments of Asian Pacific countries who disagree with the ideology of the business. Despite this, online communities thrive in these countries, bringing into question the sorts of augmentations used by its participants. This article reframes the discussion beyond restrictive regulation to focus on the DIY approach (augmentation) of community building through the use of hidden infrastructures (algorithms). This comparative study of key YouTube channels in several Asia Pacific countries highlights the sorts of techniques that bypass limiting infrastructures to boost online community engagement and growth. Lastly, this article reframes the significance of digital intermediation to highlight the opportunities key agents contribute to strengthening social imaginaries within the Asia Pacific region.
Slideshare lost the previous upload which had nearly 70K views. Re-uploading. http://knoesis.org/?q=node/2633
With the explosion in social media (1B+ Facebook users, 500M+ Twitter users) and ubiquitous mobile access (6B+ mobile phone subscribers) sharing their observations and opinions, we have unprecedented opportunities to extract social signals, create spatio-temporal mappings, perform analytics on social data, and support applications that vary from situational awareness during crisis response, preparedness and rebuilding phases to advanced analytics on social data, and gaining valuable insights to support improved decision making.This tutorial weaves three themes and corresponding relevant topics- a.) citizen sensing and crisis mapping, b.) technical challenges and recent research for leveraging citizen sensing to improve crisis response coordination, and c.) experiences in building robust and scalable platforms/systems. It will couple technical insights with identification of computational techniques and algorithms along with real-world examples. We will also do exemplary demos of the features in the Sahana, CrowdMap (Ushahidi's version) and Twitris platforms while elaborating on the practical issues and pitfalls of the development and operation of these large-scale platforms, especially during the real-time crisis response
Social Machines in Practice: Solutions, Stakeholders and Scopes Clare Hooper
This paper frames social machines as problem solving entities, demonstrating how their ecosystems address multiple stakeholders’ problems. It enumerates aspects relevant to the theory and real-world practice of social machines, based on qualitative observations from our experiences building them. We frame evolving issues including: changing functionality, users, data and context; geographical and temporal scope (considering data granularity and visibility); and social scope. The latter is wide-ranging, including motivation, trust, experience, security, governance, control, provenance, privacy and law. We provide suggestions about building flexibility into social machines to allow for change, and defining social machines in terms of problems and stakeholders.
We live in a “digital” world, the separation between physical and virtual makes (almost) no sense anymore. Here, the Corona pandemic has also acted as an accelerator/magnifier demonstrating that the future of our digital society is here with all its possibilities, but also shortcomings.
In his talk, Hannes Werthner will briefly reflect on the history of computer science, and then discuss the need for an interdisciplinary response to these shortcomings. Such an answer is the Digital Humanism, which looks at this interplay of technology and humankind, it analyzes, and, most importantly, tries to influence the complex interplay of technology and humankind, for a better society and life. In the second part he will discuss this approach, and show what was achieved since its first workshop in 2019, and what lies ahead.
Building an Equitable Tech Future - By ThoughtWorks BrisbaneThoughtworks
At the heart of ThoughtWorks is an ambitious mission: to be a proactive agent of progressive change in the world. Aware of our own privilege, we strive to see the world from the perspective of the oppressed, the powerless and the invisible.
With QUT, here in Brisbane, we’re kicking off a series of research, projects, and conversations about the social impact of tech trends, with a view to building a more equitable tech future. Some of these topics include:
- Algorithmic accountability, transparency, bias & inclusion
- Responsible data practices (privacy and ownership of data)
- Automation and the future of work
- Data use in social media and elections
- Fake news and echo chambers
- Regulating decentralised technologies
- Blockchain for good
- End-user autonomy and privacy
Slides from: Felicity Ruby, Eru Penkman, Clayton Nyakana,
Assoc. Prof. Nic Suzor (QUT) & Dr. Monique Mann (QUT)
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor TurskyiFwdays
I have heard many times that architecture is not important for the front-end. Also, many times I have seen how developers implement features on the front-end just following the standard rules for a framework and think that this is enough to successfully launch the project, and then the project fails. How to prevent this and what approach to choose? I have launched dozens of complex projects and during the talk we will analyze which approaches have worked for me and which have not.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
PHP Frameworks: I want to break free (IPC Berlin 2024)Ralf Eggert
In this presentation, we examine the challenges and limitations of relying too heavily on PHP frameworks in web development. We discuss the history of PHP and its frameworks to understand how this dependence has evolved. The focus will be on providing concrete tips and strategies to reduce reliance on these frameworks, based on real-world examples and practical considerations. The goal is to equip developers with the skills and knowledge to create more flexible and future-proof web applications. We'll explore the importance of maintaining autonomy in a rapidly changing tech landscape and how to make informed decisions in PHP development.
This talk is aimed at encouraging a more independent approach to using PHP frameworks, moving towards a more flexible and future-proof approach to PHP development.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
2. Investigator Team
Principal Investigator 5 years 2012-17
Nigel Shadbolt EPSRC funding£6.15M
Co-Investigators EP/J017728/1
Wendy Hall
Tim Berners-Lee
mc schraefel
Luc Moreau
David De Roure
David Robertson
Peter Buneman
3. The order of social machines
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.
Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999
4. An Example Social Machine
• The Kenyan election on the 27th
December 2007…
• wave of riots, killings and
turmoil…
• African blogger Erik Hersman
read a post by another blogger
Ory Okolloh…
• Resulted in Ushahidi…
• “Nobody Knows Everything, but
Everyone Knows Something.”
• local observers to submit
reports using the Web or SMS
messages from mobile phones
5. Variants of the
Ushahidi Social Machine
Port au Prince Haiti
Washington Snowmageddon
Japan Fukashima
Middle East Gaza
6. Characteristics of this social machine?
(i) problems solved by the scale of human
participation on the Web
(ii) timely mobilisation and of people, technology
and information resources
(iii) incentive to participate with which increases as
more partipate
(iv) access to or else the ability to generate large
amounts of relevant data
(v) confidence in the quality of the data
(vi) trust in the agents and process
(vii) intuitive interfaces and user-centred
(viii) works cross platform
(ix) efficient, effective and equitable
(x) exploits the power of open - Open Source,
Open Standards, Open Data, Open Licences
8. Social Machines in Context
Big Data Social
More machines
Big Compute Machines
Conventional Social
Computation Networking
More people
9. Another perspective on Social
Machines
• People supply or refine
data
• People are elementary
problem solvers
• People generate/test
partial solutions
10. Another perspective on Social
Machines
• People supply or refine
data
• People are elementary
problem solvers
• People generate/test
partial solutions
11. Another perspective on Social
Machines
• People supply or refine
data
• People are elementary
problem solvers
• People generate/test
partial solutions
12. Social Machines – Embarrassingly
Parallel
• Human Flesh Search
– Accessibilitly
– Popularisation
– Centreless
– Timeliness
– Convergence
13. Social Machines – Embarrassingly
Parallel
• DARPA Balloon challenge
• Social machines support
• timely communication,
• wide-area team-building,
• urgent mobilization
• required to solve broad-
scope, time-critical
problems
14. Social Machines can be Dark
ShadowCrew (SC), Carderplanet (CP),
Cardersmarket (CM) and Darkmarket (DM)
carders have
traded security
for efficiency
Carderplanet most fragmented network out of
the four networks studied… one explanation
for distinctive fragmentation is due the
diversity of members which includes Russian
speakers, English speakers as well as Chinese,
Japanese and Koreans.
17. The dimensions of Social Machines –
Social Machines vary depending on
• Number of people • Empowering of
• Number of machines individuals, groups or
• Scale of data crowds
• Varieties of data • Time criticality
• Type of machine problem • Extent of wide area
solving communication
• Type of human problem • Need for urgent
solving mobilization
• Specification of goal state
18. Social Machines are NOT Turing
Machines
• they do contain conventional algorithmic
components
• but much else is different
• a social machine will start with an incomplete
specification that grows and evolves to cover more
of the problem via interaction
• a social machine achieves participation through
local incentives which become reinforced as the…
• incentive for an individual to supply data to the
algorithm increases as more individuals participate
• a social machine has a notion of completeness that
is a social rather than mathematical issue
• a social machine will not usually have a notion of
the correct output or termination… rather it runs
continuously
20. What will SOCIAM do
Theme 1 Social Computation
• Understand how to design
social computations
• so that people can deal with
the complexity of the problem
solving;
• building scaleable algorithms to
pull data from individuals or the
Web more generally;
• generating new information of
higher utility from individuals
based on social interaction;
• and returning information to
individuals to reinforce their
participation in the algorithm.
21. What will SOCIAM do
Theme 2 Curated Data and Social Computation
• Understand how to design data and
databases in support of social
computations
• the information and data needed to
drive social machines and collaborative
problem solving will exists in many
different place and forms on the Web;
• some of it – perhaps most – will be user
generated; Eric Fisher CC BY 2.0
• this material will need to be given links
and made capable of discovery and
integration; Kingsley Idehen CC BY 2.0
• other data will exist in databases and
spread sheets;
• The challenge is to surface and link all of
this information and understand its
relevance in the context of the social
computations of the social machine.
Mike Bergman CC BY 2.0
22. What will SOCIAM do
Theme 3 Privacy, Accountability and Trust
• Understand how to build Social
Machines that respect privacy,
are trusted and accountable
• ensure that appropriate levels
of privacy are available with
data having different privacy
policies associated with it
• how to establish and associate
trust or at least accountability in
the data and in the social
computation
• how and why trust in data,
processes or participants is
established or breaks down in
the Web
23. What will SOCIAM do
Theme 4 Interaction
• Understand how to build Social
Machines that support effective
interaction
• effective interaction requires we
understand the contexts of use;
• how the components of the social
computation determine the shape
of the interaction;
• provide tools to support rich sense
making of the data presented in a
social computation;
• principles on which to design the
interfaces to access, represent, and
manipulate data, processes and
participants as they are introduced
24. What will SOCIAM do
Theme 5 Social Machine Implementations
• Understand how to build Social Machines for
Health Care, Transport and Policing
• the work will be driven by the availability of
open data for these sectors;
• UK is in a unique position to explore the
construction of social machines that mix open
and private, national and individual data sets;
• These areas have the potential of substantial
contributions by individuals and social groups
for both content and problem solving;
• testbeds that will ensure heterogeneous and
distributed data can be elicited, integrated and
analysed; groups to organize and determine
additional data collection, analysis or
coordinated action in the physical world via
algorithmic social computations; via
interaction, to visualize and explore the data,
to make sense of it; alongside mechanisms of
trust and accountability for the various data,
judgments, processes and participant
25. What will SOCIAM do
Theme 6 Web Observatory
• Understand Social Machines through an
observatory that observes, monitors and
classifies social machines - both those of the
project and more widely on the Web - as
they evolve;
• it will also act as an early warning facility for
new disruptive social machines elsewhere
on the Web;
• to understand how Social Machines reach
tipping points, longitudinal observational
data will reveal how they grow once
launched;
• whether they coalesce into larger machines
or fragment into micro machines that still
have utility;
• what signals need to be observed, what is a
fair and faithful sample of Web behaviour;
• this is likely to call attention to appropriate
governance, ethical and legal issues.
26. A Broader View of SOCIAM
Social computation
Engagement with Algorithms harnessing social
social capacity, composed by social
computations means.
Real-time Real-time
People
inference from assimilation of
Using personal devices;
data, from local data, from social
interacting with sensors.
to social to local
Linked data
Curation of Curating local data with social use in
personal data mind; connecting distributed data .
27. A vision for SOCIAM
• How can we coordinate 10 million people to stop crime?
• Or millions of people supporting themselves and others
in the delivery of efficient transportation?
• Or any scale of people supporting themselves and others
in the delivery of well being?
• If we can put a man on the moon with 100,000 what can
we do with 100,000,000?
• Social machines to delight and empower, absorb and
empower…