WebSci 2013 Paris

Posted on May 10, 2013 by anni

Paris blog

In the last couple of weeks I have been immersed in the world of “Web Science”, initially with a workshop on the “SOCIAM” project at the University of Southampton, and, following that, with the Web Science 2013 Conference in Paris.

Both events have given me an opportunity to more fully understand a little more about “Web Science” as a discipline, together with some of the challenges facing Web Science researchers. My own personal challenge is to more fully understand how this links in with the work we want to do with Web Science Australia, and how to connect this to a broader educational agenda leveraging the research findings to solving real world problems, particularly for government practitioners through ANZSOG.

SOCIAM

In the opening presentations at the SOCIAM meeting Nigel Shadbolt stated quite clearly that one of the main questions being asked within the project is “what exactly is a “social machine”? Originally Tim Berners-Lee described it as a socio-technical system within which the humans provide the creativity and the machines do the administrative work. But, what exactly does this mean?

In my last post I described a number of “social machines” which we can now recognise as the physical and digital worlds become ever more inter-connected with data senses and “smart” technologies – in clothing, houses and our everyday utilities.

The SOCIAM project focuses on three key areas:

  1. Health;
  2. Citizen science; and
  3. Policing.

It is hoped that through the support of “serendipitous data integration by end users”  researchers will be able to create and investigate web-based tools (social machines) with which to research and more fully understand human behaviours on the Web.

There were two projects presented which I found the most impressive:

  • Zooniverse which leverages the concept of “the game” to crowdsource science (see presentation here); and
  • The “Live Observatory” project which, at the time of writing this post, has crawled over 1.8 billion web pages to build digital libraries for Singapore.

Both of these demonstrate the power of utilising and exploring the Social Web in the pursuit of science, and the model below (developed by David de Roure) gives an insightful overview of where the concept of the “social machine” fits in to the overall technological landscape.

SocialMachineWeb Sci 2013

The Web Science 2013 conference in Paris was an opportunity to participate in a broader conversation with people involved in Web Science from around the world. Whilst it had an impressive line up of speakers, including Vint Cerf and Cory Doctorow, I found the most interesting and worthwhile session was the workshop entitled “Harnessing the power of social theory for the Web”.

The opening presentation was given by Dominique Boullier who described the evolution of perspectives around social and technical theory over the ages, and his main point was that the mindsets we are adopting now are a result of that evolution. This is where I really began to see the potential for Web Science as a truly integrative framework within which to break down some of the Cartesian barriers that have existed between the arts and sciences, and as the discussion progressed an intriguing comment was made that

“we, as the human elements of the Web as a social machine, ‘inhabit the data’ ”.

What does this mean?

I immediately thought of Genevieve Bell’s presentation on the “Higher Order Bit” and the concept of the “digital brand”. What also came to mind is the concept of the “personal data store” (or personal data locker) which, a number of people have suggested, could be the next major “killer app”.  This is because

“the Web is something you ‘do’, it is not something that ‘is’ … it is a verb not an action” (Stephane Bazan).

The Web is a combination of humans creating and communicating, and the underlying technologies enabling that. As Wendy Hall reminded us

“the basic tenet of Web Science is that Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the Web, he invented the protocols to enable ‘us’ to create the Web.”

If we acknowledge that “The Web is Us”, then we need to understand a lot more about its societal impact. This was the topic of the final session I attended, “How the Web will revolutionise Society” which was a panel comprising:

  • Amelia Andersdotter who represents the Pirate Party as a member of European Parliament;
  • Nigel Shadbolt of University of Southampton;
  • Louis Pouzin, who invented the “datagram” (sending a packets of data across a network and reconstructing them later) which influenced Vint Cerf in the construction of the Internet; and
  • Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder of “La Quadrature du Net”, a grassroots citizen advocacy group.

This session approached some of the bigger picture issues, but the main points of interest were the need for greater education of technologists about socio-politics, and of politicians about technology. Amelia Andersdotter stressed that “governments define interaction spaces in society” but they do so from a position of relative naivety and ignorance. In addition, technologists build systems with too little cognisance of the political implications. This absolutely resonated with me, as did Jérémie Zimmermann’s summation that

“humanity is its infancy when it comes to learning how to interact on the Web, with both the technologies and each other.”

The Web has been an enormous success (judged by the explosion in how people are using it) because it helps people to solve everyday problems as the go about their daily lives. It is becoming integrated with and embedded within our social systems, and only a minority people have any idea of how it actually works, nor do to they care.

The value of Web Science as a discipline is that, through it’s formal research approach

  • it can impartially observe human activity on the Web (in as near real time as has ever been possible);
  • it can bring together a truly global collection of minds to investigate emerging behaviours; and
  • it can leverage and begin to make sense of the vast resources of human knowledge to more effectively understand the social dynamics.

But, there is more that it can do, and this is demonstrated by the SOCIAM project.

Because of the very real need to address urgent problems now (rather than in years to come, well after any academic papers have been published) Web Science has the potential, through education and practical problem-solving, to connect research and practice in the short term.

What is needed is a curriculum around Web Science (and this was discussed to an extent at the Web Science and Education workshop) which begins in school, goes through university, but is also linked to daily practice in the workplace.

As our lives are underpinned by disciplines such as mathematics and language, so, I believe, that everyone needs to understand Web Science, as they participate in and co-create the digital landscape we all inhabit.

Posted in Data, Digital, Information, Research, Semantic technologies, Social Machine, Web 3.0, Web Science | Comments Off

Government as a “social machine”

Posted on April 20, 2013 by anni

social_machine_blog

“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.”  (Tim Berners-Lee)

This week I had the privilege of visiting New Zealand in order to deliver a presentation to PhD students and lecturers at the Department of Film, Television and Media Studies, University of Auckland, at the invitation of Dr Valentina Cardo.

Valentina is collaborating with Peter Thompson, Professor Michael Vitale and myself, in a research project for ANZSOG entitled “Government as a Social Machine”.

The first question, of course, is “what is a ‘social machine’”? 

Humans have always used technologies to achieve outcomes and solve problems, but, in the digital world, and facilitated by the World Wide Web, the boundaries between the human and machine parts of any such collaboration are dissolved. Together, they can be viewed as a co-evolving “social machine”.

According to research being undertaken by the Sociam Project at the University of Southampton in the UK, this is a new kind of collective problem solving phenomenon which is emerging in which:

  1. Problems are solved by very large scale human participation via the Web;
  2. There is access to, or the ability to generate, large amounts of relevant data using open data standards;
  3. Theres is confidence in the quality of the data; and
  4. Intuitive interfaces facilitate ease of use.

These are four qualities of a “Social Machine”, one example of which is Ushahidi. The Ushahidi platform is “a tool to easily crowdsource information using multiple channels, including SMS, email, Twitter and the web”. It has been used in numerous disaster management situations, in particular the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and, more recently, the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake (www.eq.org.nz).

Ushahidi demonstrates the following characteristics:

  • Problems are solved by the scale of human participation on the Web;
  • It enables the timely mobilisation of people, technology and information processes;
  • There is an incentive to participate which feeds on itself;
  • There is easy access to/ability to generate large amounts of relevant data;
  • There is confidence in the quality of the data;
  • There is trust in both the agents and processes;
  • There are intuitive interfaces and user-centred;
  • It works cross platform;
  • It is efficient, effective, and equitable; and
  • It exploits power of “open” – open source, open standards, open data, open licences.

The “social machine” is emerging as a new kind of socio-technical ecosystem within which people are taking it upon themselves to either assist Government in providing support, or assisting each other where other resources are lacking.

Another recent example is that of “Evidence Upload”, where, following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, a group of Boston start-up founders created a Social Machine in order to allow people to upload photos from their smartphones which were then sent directly to the FBI.

Government as a “social machine”

With all of this in mind our project aims to explore the concept of twenty-first century government as a “social machine” in its own right, with a focus on analysing the links between the rapid development of information and communications technologies and accompanying organisational changes.

We are asking three fundamental questions:

  1. How does Government as a “social machine” change the way that it interacts with citizens?
  2. What key challenges are emerging as a result of this perspective?
  3. How are Government agencies addressing these challenges?

Project Objectives

Our first objective is to describe and articulate what the concept of the “social machine” means for Government in the digital age.

Our second objective will be to link the concept of the “social machine” with the three key drivers of government reform, are often described as: transformation, effectiveness and efficiency. What we are looking for are stories where the development of a “social machine” has enabled a group of people to collaborate utilising socially sourced data (public or open source) to solve a problem or deliver a service.

We will explore the three aspects of:

  • The social machine as a tool for democracy;
  • The social machine as a tool for communication; and
  • The social machine as a tool for customer satisfaction.

One of our outcomes is to develop a Case Study (framed by the ANZSOG Case Study methodology) with which to capture the learnings, articulate any emergent “best practice”, and more fully understand what kinds of skills and knowledge public sector managers need in order to utilise social machines more effectively to do their jobs.

In particular Peter Thompson and I hope to create a case study which we will use as part of our 2013 “Managing Public Communications” ANZSOG Executive Workshop, and the plan is to develop a Web-based prototype of our own “social machine” as part of this process.

Government 2.0 and the Social Machine

Not long ago I wrote a post about Government 2.0 describing it as “an opportunity for reinvention” and the opportunity to develop new mindset about the concept of “government” and “governance” within a digitally enabled and connected world.

In 2010 Tim O’Reilly wrote an article entitled “Government as a Platform” in which he stated:

“the secret to the success of bellwethers like Google, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter is that each of these sites, in its own way, has learned to harness the power of its users to add value to — no, more than that, to co-create — its offerings.”

O’Reilly linked this to phenomenon of “Government 2.0” commenting that

Government 2.0 is not a new kind of government; it is government stripped down to its core, rediscovered and reimagined as if for the first time. … (G)overnment is, at bottom, a mechanism for collective action. We band together, make laws, pay taxes, and build the institutions of government to manage problems that are too large for us individually and whose solution is in our common interest.

Government 2.0, then, is the use of technology—especially the collaborative technologies at the heart of Web 2.0—to better solve collective problems at a city, state, national, and international level.

O’Reilly suggests that Governments harness the power of citizens to add value.  Instead of the “vending machine” transactional model where we all pay our taxes and then demand and expect services in return, in the “2.0” world we have the opportunity to conceive of government as the manager of the marketplace (or “bazaar”) intended to serve the people and help a reconnected community exchange goods and services.

Our project will only just scratch the surface but hopefully it will bring some key insights into this conversation which will be useful.

Posted in ANZSOG, Communications, Digital, Education, Government, Social Machine, Web 3.0, Web Science | Comments Off

Leadership is not a commodity

Posted on April 1, 2013 by anni

bombers_blog

Every now and then I am involved in something which reminds me of how very privileged I have been in my life, in both the people I have known and the opportunities I have had.

Last week I went to Canberra for the launch of Peter Rees’ latest book “Lancaster Men” in the Officers’ Mess at ADFA. It was fun to go to AFDA, which I’ve never visited, despite all of my years hanging around at Duntroon in my youth. As I wandered around I recalled my father’s scepticism about creating a tri-service academy which, he felt, could potentially dilute and undermine the culture of each of the services. That culture was born from a shared history and shared experiences, and, all too often, the painful memories of the past which the rest of us can all too easily forget.

“Lancaster Men” tells the story of “Bomber Command” during the Second World War, and my involvement came about because Peter’s niece is an old friend who connected us when she knew that he was writing the story. My father, Air Marshal Sir James Rowland, was a Pathfinder who flew Lancasters, and I was able to contribute his story based on his own writings together with trunks full of “stuff” which is in my garage.

The launch attracted some of the few remaining Bomber Command veterans, together with family, friends and some who were just interested, and, although I vaguely remember names mentioned over the years, there were few that I actually knew. I always find it a humbling experience to be a part of these types of gatherings where our elderly heroes celebrate the escapades of their youth, not with fabricated and hyped-up stories, but with the brave and honest truth.

These men were adventurers, who not only set out to face the challenge of war, but who  took on the vagaries of the relatively new technologies of flight and airborne armaments, and were a part of the one of the most costly WWII exercises in terms of lives lost. More than 125,000 men from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Poland flew bombers against Nazi Germany, and of those, some 55,573 were killed. Around 10,000 Australians were part of the Bomber Command operations, and 3,486, over a third, died on active service.

In 1940, following the Battle of Britain, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill proudly said that

“The fighters are our salvation but the bombers alone provide the means of victory.”

Despite these words there was no post-War recognition of Bomber Command, nor the issuing of any campaign medals. This was, it seems, due to the controversy surrounding the large-scale area bombing strategy which resulted in the destruction of numerous Germany cities, most notably the city of Dresden killing around 25,000 civilians. It was only in June 2012 that a memorial to Bomber Command was unveiled.

A key part of the bombing strategy was to have 24-hour coverage, and, at the peak of the campaign, around 1,000 heavy bombers would attack on any one night, with up to 10 per cent of aircraft and crews failing to return.  My father was one of those “missing in action” due to a mid-air collision over Germany which resulted in him spending the remainder of the war as a POW, or a “guest of the Chancellor”, as he used to say. My father’s story, like so many others, displays courage, fortitude and bravery, and these experiences were undoubtedly foundational in terms of his career success.

These accounts are priceless, not only in order to understand our own military and political history, but in order to explore and appreciate the concept of leadership within a context that few of us will ever experience. This is something that Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, one of our most thoughtful contemporary leaders, commented on in his speech to launch the book. As I was going through some of my fathers material I kept on thinking about how our own young people are not taught enough of this, nor given examples of genuine heroes to look up to, admire, and seek to emulate. Instead of the school syllabus filled with Australian “folklore” based on bush-rangers and explorers, combined with the manufactured and marketing-driven Hollywood “blockbusters” that overwhelm our screens, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were more well-known authentic stories of bravery based on very real heroes, some of whom are still among us?

The concept of the hero, and the myths which surround them, are something fundamental to human nature. As Karen Armstrong, argues in her “Short History of Myth”:

“Mythical thinking and practice had helped people to face the prospect of extinction and nothingness, and to come through it with a degree of acceptance. Without this discipline it has been difficult for many to avoid despair.  The twentieth century presented us with one nihilistic icon after the other.”

“We still seek heroes … The myth of the hero was not intended to provide us with icons to admire, but was designed to tap into the vein of heroism within ourselves.”

Leadership is not a commodity that can be packaged and sold, it is not something that has a ten-point plan, nor is it something that anyone can do at any time. The ability to lead yourself, let alone others, is something that we all recognise when we feel it, and the ability to recognise true bravery, courage and sacrifice is something that is innate in us all, but often the product of dire circumstances. Stories such as those told in “Lancaster Men” show how individuals can rise to do remarkable things when required, and it is often the quiet achievers who do so without hesitation or question.

I heartfully thank Peter Rees for choosing to include my father’s story, just one among many, of brave souls who fought for what they believed, and paid the price in their own personal way for the rest of their lives.

Posted in Leadership | Comments Off