big data and social machines
DESCRIPTION
Chalmers Initiative Seminar on Big Data, 25th March 2014TRANSCRIPT
Big Data and Social MachinesDavid De Rouree-Research Centre, University of Oxford
@dder
Overview
1. Big Data for research (UK perspective)
2. Several shifts in scholarship
3. Social Machines
4. Towards a new knowledge infrastructure
Edwards, P. N., et al. (2013) Knowledge Infrastructures: Intellectual Frameworks and Research Challenges. Ann Arbor: Deep Blue. http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/97552
Big Data doesn’t respect disciplinary boundaries
Digital Social Research
theODI.org
The Big Picture
More people
More
mach
ines
Big DataBig Compute
Conventional Computation
“Big Social”Social Networks
e-infrastructure
onlineR&D
Big Data Production& Analytics
deeplyaboutsociety
The f
utu
re
Research Councils UK and Big Data
▶ ‘Big data is a term for a collection of datasets so large and complex that it is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyse them. ‘Big’ is not defined as being larger than a certain number of ‘bytes’ because as technology advances over time, the size of datasets that qualify as big data will also increase’ (RCUK)
Big Data Network
Research benefits of new data▶Undertaking research on pressing policy-related
issues without the need for new data collection
• Food consumption, social background and obesity
• Energy consumption, housing type and climatic conditions
• Rural location, private/public transport alternatives and incomes
• School attainment, higher education participation, subject choices, student debt and later incomes
▶New data such as social media enable us to ask big questions, about big populations, and in real time – this is transformative
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/series/reading-the-riots
E-i
nfr
ast
ruct
ure
Leaders
hip
C
ounci
l
Neil
Chue H
ong
Mandy Chessell
F i r s t
Interdisciplinary and “in the wild” *
* “in it” versus “on it”
Nigel Shadbolt et al
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. The ability to create new forms of social process would be given to the world at large, and development would be rapid.Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999 (pp. 172–175)
The Order of Social Machines
SOCIAM: The Theory and Practice of Social Machines is funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant number EPJ017728/1 and comprises the Universities of Southampton, Oxford and Edinburgh. See sociam.org
Physical World(people and devices)
Building a Social Machine
Design andComposition
Participation andData supply
Model of social interaction
Virtual World(Network of social interactions)
Dave Robertson
Kevin Page
Cat De Rourehttp://botornot.net
A revolutionary idea…Open Science!
http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/
Join the W3C Community Group www.w3.org/community/rosc
Jun Zhao
www.researchobject.org
www.force11.org
Web as
lensWeb as artefact
Web as
infrastructure
Web Observatorieshttp://www.w3.org/community/webobservatory/
Big data elephant versus sense-making network?
The challenge is to foster the co-constituted socio-technical system on the right i.e. a computationally-enabled sense-making network of expertise, data, models, visualisations and narratives
Iain Buchan
Pip Willcox
@marstonbikepath
Datasets or dataflows?
Take homes
▶There are multiple shifts in scholarship occurring:– Volumes of data and associated automation– Computational infrastructure and realtime
analytics– Dataflows vs datasets (and curation
infrastructure)– Correlation vs causation– Responsible Innovation– Machine-to-Machine and Internet of Things
▶Social Machines provide an approach to co-design and analysis in the evolving knowledge infrastructure
www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/people/dder
@dder
Slide and image credits: Fiona Armstrong, Christine Borgman, Iain Buchan, Mandy Chessell, Cat De Roure, Neil Chue Hong, Dave Robertson, Nigel Shadbolt, Pip Willcox, Jun Zhao, Guardian, Royal Society
