BEING, SPACE, AND TIME

ON THE WEB

Michalis VafopoulosVafopoulos.org

National Technical University of Athens

The Web space is:

o Everywhere o Controversialo Contradictory o Unusual o Complex o Dynamic – “live” system

the new ecosystem

What is changing?• New issues: personal and global agenda• Prosumers: Self-powered production• Inter-creativity: Distributed collaborative

production

• Non market & non property production

What is needed?• New analysis• New governance • New values

New analysis: Web science

before WWW after 

3/18

New analysis: Web science

• a trans-disciplinary field –Web as its primary object of study–Web= techno-social artifact

• positive or negative?Transformative!

3/18

Web science

• envelope question

what technological and other changes need to be made in order for the Web to work better for more people?

3/18

Two magics of Web Science

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Web & Philosophy

Web

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Google

Semantic Web

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Web science perspective

what changes need to be incorporated in the Web to best serve humanity?

Can science & philosophy help in this direction? How?

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Research question I

What are the main characteristics of being, space, and time on the Web if it is considered a self-contained system that exists in and byitself?

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Research question II

How do these idiosyncratic features of the Web transform thetraditional conceptions about physical being, space and time?

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Outline

① Hypotheses ② Being, space & time in the Web③ Applications ④ Hayek’s freedom ⑤ 3-level analysis

– The Technological Web– The Contextualized Web– The Economic Web

⑥ Results & discussion 15

Being, space & time on the Web

• Being: exists if and only if there is a communication channel linking to it

• Web beings: beings communicated through the Web

• Web space: the Web being’s URI, incoming & outgoing links

• Web time: visiting durations 16

The easy part: criticism “Web …resource” • economic and ecological connotations

– human, natural, renewable etc. – land, labor, and capital– 12 appearances in Economics classification– Wikipedia: not a word about Internet/Web

thing”• Not descriptive, too general, multiple

meanings

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Being on the Web

• practical & general definition • Include some existing theories

e.g.• “Dasein (Heidegger)• “circulating entities” (ANT), revert

dichotomy individuals - society

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Being on the Web

• “to have” (e.g., friends, connections, identities) becomes of equal importance to “to be”

• should be studied along with the various manifestations of “to be.”

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URI -1

minimal description of invariant elements in communication through the Web

borderline, interlocutor & fingerprint of Web being

enables transformation from digital to Web

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URI -2

directly connected to existence (birth, access, navigate, edit & death of a Web being)

other characteristics of Web beings may change in time

a change in URI means the death of existing & birth of a new Web being

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The Web space -1

• a division of position & place created by the links among Web beings

• each Web being occupies a specific locus in the Web network

• a 3d “geographic coordinate system” • heterogeneous

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The Web space -2

• many “gravity” & relative “distance” metrics

• Such as hubs and authorities, centrality and algorithms (e.g., community detection)

• Pagerank initially build on Web space

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The time -1

• “bookkeeping” clock time (Physics)

• time is like a universal order within which all changes are related to each other (Aristotle)

• Time is meaningless if there are no tangible events (Aristotle)

• a series of choices in space24

The Bergsonian time -1

• sequence of finite & heterogeneous durations

• irreversible (unpredictable future) Each duration has a significance different from that of each preceding

• and following one. The transition from inner time to the time of things

• is related to memory and consciousness)

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The Bergsonian time -2

• Each duration has a significance different from that of each preceding and following one

“These 5 min felt like a century..” • The transition from inner time to

the time of things is related to memory and consciousness

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The Bergsonian time -3

• indeterminism• heterogeneity • irreversibility • capturing the essence of human

behavior.• The time of social systems

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The Web time -1

• a series of choices (visits) in the Web space (Bergsonian durations)

• visiting selections attach semantic meaning

• casual relationships among Web beings

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The Web time -2

• counting: Log file as a generic common property & co-operation in the Web

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The Web time -3Durations are becoming: Discoverable, Observable, Traceable Processable, Massive

increases material dimension of networks

enables reconstruction of consciousness & memory of Users

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Relax the hypothesis of the self-contained Web and

describehow the Web affects physical space, time, and existence.

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Space and the Web

Discoverable & Traceable (e.g. online maps)

both expands (hyper-connected) and limits the notion of physical space (less travel)

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Time and the Web -1

Human activities through or on the Web have become available • asynchronously• (in part) synchronously• continuously

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Time and the Web -2

Flexibility:If physical time is an arbitrary standard that enables the division of infinite space into useful parts, the Web assists us in separating it intoeven finer pieces

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Time and the Web -3

pressure on traditional socio-economic structures (e.g. law) and

Human behavior

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Being and the Web -1

“networked individuals” – homo connectus • linking with little regard to space

(Wellman 2002)

• mobilize part or all of their information operating in a more flexible, less-bounded, and spatially dispersed environment.

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Being and the Web -1

• frequent switching among multiple social networks and modes of communication,

• a different sense of belonging, flexible business arrangements,

• and intense time management• privatized space• peer production as the 4th P in property,

procurement, patronage, and peer production (David 1992).

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Research challenges

• to obtain the right balance between open access to online information and self-determination of users, on the one hand, and to provide the proper incentives to produce content and develop network infrastructure

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Research challenges

to accelerate socio-economic development by facilitating life-critical functions in the developing world and by enabling transparency, participation, and added-value services in the developed world.

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How to analyze the Web as an ethical space?

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Hypotheses

Web:• ethically-relevant social machine• magma of Users and code

start from the Web assume a self-contained Web orthe “manna from heaven” hypothesis(internal ethics analysis)

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“manna from heaven” hypothesis

• Web is the only existing system • human beings are communicating

& working solely through it • a compassionate ‘God’ provides

the necessary quantity of ‘manna’, fulfilling all human needs, with no cost & effort

• Web being, space & time42

Freedom I

othe source of values o“freedom-coercion” tradeoff

–more options to solve problems collectively & innovate, but

–some of these options may be used in ways that cause coercion

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Freedom II• Theories:how to construct a system that selects, with minimum social cost which positive options to sacrifice in order to minimize coercion (or the dual problem) • start with Hayek’s approach

because confronts with most Web characteristics

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Hayek’s freedom I • State posses the monopoly to

enforce coercive power through General Rules

• Personal Sphere & Property counterweight state power

• General Rules are enforced equally & describe the borderlines between State & Personal Sphere

• Property is a basic realization of General Rules

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Hayek’s freedom II • Competition is possible by the

dispersion of Property• Mutually advantageous collaboration

is based on Competition in service provision

• effective anti-monopolistic policy: require from the monopolist (including the state) to treat all customers alike

• Individuals should be responsible & accountable for their actions

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3-level analysis

Apply theory of freedom according to Web’s evolution from plain s/w to ecosystem

• The Technological Web– Internet infrastructure & Web software

• The Contextualized Web– Sets of rules enforced through trust

• The Economic Web– Economic contexts

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The Web as a space of Freedom

Freedom free access & inter-connection of any compatible software/device

freely navigate, create and update Web Beings and links universality, openness & separation of layers in engineering, editing, searching & navigating

establish specific contexts in order to form beliefs that some Users/Web beings are trustworthy

no barriers to economize

Coercion badware applications (e.g. computer-zombies)

traffic censorship (e.g.“Snooping”)

inadequate quality of transmission

badware-infected Web Beings central control & censoring of traffic“walled gardens” in SN (privacy threats & fragmentation)

manipulation of indexing & searching (e.g. spamdexing)

un-trustworthy technologies, business & governments badware & malicious representations

concentration of power in a minority of Users inability of some people to benefit from the Web economy

Internet

Web software

Contextualized Web

Economic Web

Personal sphere

IP address: can only be processed for certain reasons oWeb: log file common ownership by

design (admin & navigator) o architectural element of co-operation

oAdmin: direct access oNavigator: not straightforward access

o not proper practices for collecting traffic

oshould be further analyzed

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General rules

Treating all Internet Users, Web Navigators & Editors equally • profile customization • open technological standards• efficient business incentives

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The contextualized Web• Web 2.5: not only User-

Generated Content, but context • communication is central to

establishing trust (Habermas) • rich connectivity of the Web is

bound into its function • antitrust & coercion= the prices

for widespread & beneficial trust 51

The contextualized Web

internal Web ethics: • ensure not that antitrust

happens, but • that it is outweighed by

beneficial trust to as great a degree as possible consistent with Hayekian notions of freedom

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Challenges in the economic Web I

obtain the right balance between: • open access and processing of

online information (e.g. socially aware cloud storage, g-work)

& • provision of incentives to

produce content & to develop network infrastructure

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Challenges in the economic Web II

• accelerate socio-economic development by facilitating life-critical functions in the developing world (e.g. W3F)

• enable transparency & participation in the developed world (e.g. Open Data)

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Challenges in the economic Web III

o“Link economy” o“App economy” oexcessive market power in

Search Engine market

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Results I • centralization of traffic & data

control • rights on visiting log file • custom User profiles • interplay among function,

structure & moral values

are directly connected to the quality of freedom in the Web 56

Results II

issues about freedom in lower levels of the Web (i.e. technology) have crucial impact on the subsequent levels of higher complexity (i.e. context, economy)

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Next steps

o involve more theories & disciplines

o relax assumptionsoconnect to engineering issues

(e.g. TAG)oWebizing humanity & humanizing

Web

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Webizing humanity & humanizing Web

Web: • emerged not as a business project with

hierarchical structures but • as a creative & open space of volunteers

outside traditional market and pricing• markets would have never invested such

amounts in labor costs to develop it • temporal disconnection between effort &

rewards • symbiosis between non-financial and

financial incentives 59

Webizing humanity – humanizing web

In economyo incorporate in the entire economy, the best

of the symbiosis between virtues and economic incentives in the Web

o the Web has still many lessons to take from the long-living market mechanisms on how to best orchestrate effort and reward in society

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C. Initiate interesting questions

Incorporates directly the relation and co-evolution between online and physical world• What is the quality & quantity of this

relation?• Rethink influential concepts under the

proposed framework: Embodiment, artifactualization, network individualism, privatised spaces and peer production.

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Role of philosophy

What society can learn from the Web?

What can teach it in order to become more useful?

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Thank you!

• More in vafopoulos.org

References• Being, space and time in the Web.

Metaphilosophy (forthcoming).• The Web economy: goods, users,

models and policies. Foundations and Trends in Web science (forthcoming).

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appendix

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The Web time

“time of social systems” is • indeterministic,• Heterogeneous • irreversible • built on the Einsteinian time of

physical systems.

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The case of Net Neutrality

• QoS issues• Technological approach (e.g.

Flow-Aware Networking) • generic freedom-coercion trade-

offs are useful in framing the feasibility space but incomplete in treating more specific cases in practice (like NN)

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Flow-Aware NetworkingFAN may ensure neutrality along with the awareness of QoS create an occurrence, upon which the implicit separation will be performed solely based on the current link status (e.g. dataflow congestion, traffic bottleneck etc.). Therefore, all datagrams are forwarded unconditionally in the pipeline, but they are also “equal”, subject to be separated or even dropped when the network tolerance demands it. The main advantage of FAN-based architectures is that they differentiate the data flow, taking into account only the traffic characteristics of the currently transmitted information. Hence, apart from data discrimination, it is not possible to comprehensively discriminate certain applications, services and end-Users.

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The Being – Query ① The easy part: criticism ② The hard part: build concepts & models③ The Being-Query framework: network

inside!④ Introducing the Web: Web Beings ⑤ The Being – Query framework expanded⑥ How can this framework be useful?

– Understand & compare diverse models– Expand existing & create new concepts – Initiate interesting questions

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The hard part: build concepts

Step 1: definition & assumptions• A Being exists if and only if there is a

communication channel linking to it. (possible update based on HH)

• A Query is the phrasing of a question by a Being, usually in terms of a code. The questions are messages expressed as sequences of symbols in the query language. Beings have Queries that address them to other Beings.

up to now: an abstract model that could be described by a weighted network of Beings (not very useful!)

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… and models

Step 2: building the framework• Users, are Beings that can “consciously”

form Queries.• Queries are organized in Topics (tractable

and processable).

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Topics

Queries

Users

Beings

The Being-Query framework: network inside!

A quad network: contraction of 4 interconnected networks

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Queries

Beings

Topics

Users

Introducing the Web: Web Beings

Beings that can be communicated through the Web. URI: The minimal description of invariant

elements in communication through the Web.

Directly connected to existence (birth, access, navigate, edit & death of a Web being)

Other characteristics of Web beings may change in time.

A change in URI means the death of existing & birth of a new WB.

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The Being – Query framework expanded

“Teleportation”, Search Engines, relevance feedback, …Search Engine: get as inputs Queries and produce collections of Web beings

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Topics

Queries

Web Queries

Users

Web Users

Beings

Web Beings

“teleportation”

Search engine

How can this framework be useful?

Networks facilitate understanding, measuring, modeling, comparing, deciding & forming policy when connections matter and today matter more than ever…

A. Understand & compare existing models

B. Expand existing & create new concepts C. Initiate interesting questions

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A. Understand & compare existing models

① Computer science [e.g. User models, TF (single: Web)]

② Network science [e.g. Barabasi (single: Web)]③ Economic modeling (e.g.)

– Stegeman (dual: Users-Web)

– Papadimitriou et al (triad: Users-Queries, Topics, Web)

– Katona-Sarvary (triad: Navigators-Users, Editors-Web, Topics)

– Not yet published (quad-network models)

Possible extensions in DSS, ERP, Bus. Intelligence

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B. Expand existing & create new concepts

• Existing: e.g. Digital economy, ICT4D, internet of things,…

• New: e.g. Web goodsWeb beings with economic valueWeb UsersWeb economy

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Web Users and economy

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