The Theory and Practice of Social Machines

The Theory and Practice of Social Machines PDF Author: Nigel Shadbolt
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030108899
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Social machines are a type of network connected by interactive digital devices made possible by the ubiquitous adoption of technologies such as the Internet, the smartphone, social media and the read/write World Wide Web, connecting people at scale to document situations, cooperate on tasks, exchange information, or even simply to play. Existing social processes may be scaled up, and new social processes enabled, to solve problems, augment reality, create new sources of value, and disrupt existing practice. This book considers what talents one would need to understand or build a social machine, describes the state of the art, and speculates on the future, from the perspective of the EPSRC project SOCIAM – The Theory and Practice of Social Machines. The aim is to develop a set of tools and techniques for investigating, constructing and facilitating social machines, to enable us to narrow down pragmatically what is becoming a wide space, by asking ‘when will it be valuable to use these methods on a sociotechnical system?’ The systems for which the use of these methods adds value are social machines in which there is rich person-to-person communication, and where a large proportion of the machine’s behaviour is constituted by human interaction.

The Theory and Practice of Social Machines

The Theory and Practice of Social Machines PDF Author: Nigel Shadbolt
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030108899
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Get Book Here

Book Description
Social machines are a type of network connected by interactive digital devices made possible by the ubiquitous adoption of technologies such as the Internet, the smartphone, social media and the read/write World Wide Web, connecting people at scale to document situations, cooperate on tasks, exchange information, or even simply to play. Existing social processes may be scaled up, and new social processes enabled, to solve problems, augment reality, create new sources of value, and disrupt existing practice. This book considers what talents one would need to understand or build a social machine, describes the state of the art, and speculates on the future, from the perspective of the EPSRC project SOCIAM – The Theory and Practice of Social Machines. The aim is to develop a set of tools and techniques for investigating, constructing and facilitating social machines, to enable us to narrow down pragmatically what is becoming a wide space, by asking ‘when will it be valuable to use these methods on a sociotechnical system?’ The systems for which the use of these methods adds value are social machines in which there is rich person-to-person communication, and where a large proportion of the machine’s behaviour is constituted by human interaction.

The Theory and Practice of Social Machines

The Theory and Practice of Social Machines PDF Author: Nigel Shadbolt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783030108908
Category : COMPUTERS
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Social machines are a type of network connected by interactive digital devices made possible by the ubiquitous adoption of technologies such as the Internet, the smartphone, social media and the read/write World Wide Web, connecting people at scale to document situations, cooperate on tasks, exchange information, or even simply to play. Existing social processes may be scaled up, and new social processes enabled, to solve problems, augment reality, create new sources of value, and disrupt existing practice. This book considers what talents one would need to understand or build a social machine, describes the state of the art, and speculates on the future, from the perspective of the EPSRC project SOCIAM – The Theory and Practice of Social Machines. The aim is to develop a set of tools and techniques for investigating, constructing and facilitating social machines, to enable us to narrow down pragmatically what is becoming a wide space, by asking ‘when will it be valuable to use these methods on a sociotechnical system?’ The systems for which the use of these methods adds value are social machines in which there is rich person-to-person communication, and where a large proportion of the machine’s behaviour is constituted by human interaction.

Machine Learners

Machine Learners PDF Author: Adrian Mackenzie
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262036827
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
If machine learning transforms the nature of knowledge, does it also transform the practice of critical thought? Machine learning—programming computers to learn from data—has spread across scientific disciplines, media, entertainment, and government. Medical research, autonomous vehicles, credit transaction processing, computer gaming, recommendation systems, finance, surveillance, and robotics use machine learning. Machine learning devices (sometimes understood as scientific models, sometimes as operational algorithms) anchor the field of data science. They have also become mundane mechanisms deeply embedded in a variety of systems and gadgets. In contexts from the everyday to the esoteric, machine learning is said to transform the nature of knowledge. In this book, Adrian Mackenzie investigates whether machine learning also transforms the practice of critical thinking. Mackenzie focuses on machine learners—either humans and machines or human-machine relations—situated among settings, data, and devices. The settings range from fMRI to Facebook; the data anything from cat images to DNA sequences; the devices include neural networks, support vector machines, and decision trees. He examines specific learning algorithms—writing code and writing about code—and develops an archaeology of operations that, following Foucault, views machine learning as a form of knowledge production and a strategy of power. Exploring layers of abstraction, data infrastructures, coding practices, diagrams, mathematical formalisms, and the social organization of machine learning, Mackenzie traces the mostly invisible architecture of one of the central zones of contemporary technological cultures. Mackenzie's account of machine learning locates places in which a sense of agency can take root. His archaeology of the operational formation of machine learning does not unearth the footprint of a strategic monolith but reveals the local tributaries of force that feed into the generalization and plurality of the field.

Big Data Meets Survey Science

Big Data Meets Survey Science PDF Author: Craig A. Hill
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118976320
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 784

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Book Description
Offers a clear view of the utility and place for survey data within the broader Big Data ecosystem This book presents a collection of snapshots from two sides of the Big Data perspective. It assembles an array of tangible tools, methods, and approaches that illustrate how Big Data sources and methods are being used in the survey and social sciences to improve official statistics and estimates for human populations. It also provides examples of how survey data are being used to evaluate and improve the quality of insights derived from Big Data. Big Data Meets Survey Science: A Collection of Innovative Methods shows how survey data and Big Data are used together for the benefit of one or more sources of data, with numerous chapters providing consistent illustrations and examples of survey data enriching the evaluation of Big Data sources. Examples of how machine learning, data mining, and other data science techniques are inserted into virtually every stage of the survey lifecycle are presented. Topics covered include: Total Error Frameworks for Found Data; Performance and Sensitivities of Home Detection on Mobile Phone Data; Assessing Community Wellbeing Using Google Street View and Satellite Imagery; Using Surveys to Build and Assess RBS Religious Flag; and more. Presents groundbreaking survey methods being utilized today in the field of Big Data Explores how machine learning methods can be applied to the design, collection, and analysis of social science data Filled with examples and illustrations that show how survey data benefits Big Data evaluation Covers methods and applications used in combining Big Data with survey statistics Examines regulations as well as ethical and privacy issues Big Data Meets Survey Science: A Collection of Innovative Methods is an excellent book for both the survey and social science communities as they learn to capitalize on this new revolution. It will also appeal to the broader data and computer science communities looking for new areas of application for emerging methods and data sources.

Beyond the Creative Species

Beyond the Creative Species PDF Author: Oliver Bown
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262361760
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
A multidisciplinary introduction to the field of computational creativity, analyzing the impact of advanced generative technologies on art and music. As algorithms get smarter, what role will computers play in the creation of music, art, and other cultural artifacts? Will they be able to create such things from the ground up, and will such creations be meaningful? In Beyond the Creative Species, Oliver Bown offers a multidisciplinary examination of computational creativity, analyzing the impact of advanced generative technologies on art and music. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, design, social theory, the psychology of creativity, and creative practice research, Bown argues that to understand computational creativity, we must not only consider what computationally creative algorithms actually do, but also examine creative artistic activity itself.

The Twittering Machine

The Twittering Machine PDF Author: Richard Seymour
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788739310
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
A brilliant probe into the political and psychological effects of our changing relationship with social media Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience. The Twittering Machine is an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. In this polemical tour de force, Richard Seymour shows how the digital world is changing the ways we speak, write, and think. Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and insights from users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of the machine, asking what we’re getting out of it, and what we’re getting into. Social media held out the promise that we could make our own history–to what extent did we choose the nightmare that it has become?

Understanding Machine Learning

Understanding Machine Learning PDF Author: Shai Shalev-Shwartz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107057132
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Introduces machine learning and its algorithmic paradigms, explaining the principles behind automated learning approaches and the considerations underlying their usage.

Algorithmic Regulation

Algorithmic Regulation PDF Author: Karen Yeung
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192575449
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
As the power and sophistication of of 'big data' and predictive analytics has continued to expand, so too has policy and public concern about the use of algorithms in contemporary life. This is hardly surprising given our increasing reliance on algorithms in daily life, touching policy sectors from healthcare, transport, finance, consumer retail, manufacturing education, and employment through to public service provision and the operation of the criminal justice system. This has prompted concerns about the need and importance of holding algorithmic power to account, yet it is far from clear that existing legal and other oversight mechanisms are up to the task. This collection of essays, edited by two leading regulatory governance scholars, offers a critical exploration of 'algorithmic regulation', understood both as a means for co-ordinating and regulating social action and decision-making, as well as the need for institutional mechanisms through which the power of algorithms and algorithmic systems might themselves be regulated. It offers a unique perspective that is likely to become a significant reference point for the ever-growing debates about the power of algorithms in daily life in the worlds of research, policy and practice. The range of contributors are drawn from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives including law, public administration, applied philosophy, data science and artificial intelligence. Taken together, they highlight the rise of algorithmic power, the potential benefits and risks associated with this power, the way in which Sheila Jasanoff's long-standing claim that 'technology is politics' has been thrown into sharp relief by the speed and scale at which algorithmic systems are proliferating, and the urgent need for wider public debate and engagement of their underlying values and value trade-offs, the way in which they affect individual and collective decision-making and action, and effective and legitimate mechanisms by and through which algorithmic power is held to account.

The Mangle of Practice

The Mangle of Practice PDF Author: Andrew Pickering
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226668258
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
This ambitious book by one of the most original and provocative thinkers in science studies offers a sophisticated new understanding of the nature of scientific, mathematical, and engineering practice and the production of scientific knowledge. Andrew Pickering offers a new approach to the unpredictable nature of change in science, taking into account the extraordinary number of factors—social, technological, conceptual, and natural—that interact to affect the creation of scientific knowledge. In his view, machines, instruments, facts, theories, conceptual and mathematical structures, disciplined practices, and human beings are in constantly shifting relationships with one another—"mangled" together in unforeseeable ways that are shaped by the contingencies of culture, time, and place. Situating material as well as human agency in their larger cultural context, Pickering uses case studies to show how this picture of the open, changeable nature of science advances a richer understanding of scientific work both past and present. Pickering examines in detail the building of the bubble chamber in particle physics, the search for the quark, the construction of the quarternion system in mathematics, and the introduction of computer-controlled machine tools in industry. He uses these examples to address the most basic elements of scientific practice—the development of experimental apparatus, the production of facts, the development of theory, and the interrelation of machines and social organization.

Everyday Technology

Everyday Technology PDF Author: David Arnold
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226922030
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
In 1909 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, on his way back to South Africa from London, wrote his now celebrated tract Hind Swaraj, laying out his vision for the future of India and famously rejecting the technological innovations of Western civilization. Despite his protestations, Western technology endured and helped to make India one of the leading economies in our globalized world. Few would question the dominant role that technology plays in modern life, but to fully understand how India first advanced into technological modernity, argues David Arnold, we must consider the technology of the everyday. Everyday Technology is a pioneering account of how small machines and consumer goods that originated in Europe and North America became objects of everyday use in India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather than investigate “big” technologies such as railways and irrigation projects, Arnold examines the assimilation and appropriation of bicycles, rice mills, sewing machines, and typewriters in India, and follows their impact on the ways in which people worked and traveled, the clothes they wore, and the kind of food they ate. But the effects of these machines were not limited to the daily rituals of Indian society, and Arnold demonstrates how such small-scale technologies became integral to new ways of thinking about class, race, and gender, as well as about the politics of colonial rule and Indian nationhood. Arnold’s fascinating book offers new perspectives on the globalization of modern technologies and shows us that to truly understand what modernity became, we need to look at the everyday experiences of people in all walks of life, taking stock of how they repurposed small technologies to reinvent their world and themselves.