philip sheldrake - university of southampton · 2016. 7. 19. · web, and briefly identifies user...

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON

Faculty of Physical and Applied Science

School of Electronics and Computer Science

Networked agency

By Philip Sheldrake

Supervisors: Prof Wendy Hall and Dr Kieron O’Hara

Nine-month progress report

11th July 2016

http://www.philipsheldrake.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/networked-agency-nine-month-report.pdf

This report is informed by Philip Sheldrake’s contribution to the free and open source hi:project. It is

licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, a Free Culture License.

Abstract

Personal agency is the potential to ‘act otherwise’, the capacity to participate, to start

something, to act independently. Here I examine the theoretical perspectives of

agency, consider it in sociotechnical terms, and describe a human-computer

interaction concept motivated by the opportunity to protect and grow personal

agency. The description of this project’s nascent architecture encompasses digital

agency, privacy, accessibility and digital inclusion, and redecentralising the Internet

and the World Wide Web. The report concludes by scoping future work.

Table of contents

1 Literature review ...................................................................................................... 1

1.1 A dichotomy ..................................................................................................... 1

1.2 A unification ...................................................................................................... 2

1.3 A return to dualism? ......................................................................................... 3

1.4 Agencement ..................................................................................................... 6

1.5 Algorithms, intermediary agency, and control ................................................. 7

1.6 It’s complex .................................................................................................... 11

2 The interface .......................................................................................................... 13

2.1 Catering to difference ..................................................................................... 13

2.1.1 CC/PP and ARIA ............................................................................... 13

2.1.2 User modelling .................................................................................. 14

2.1.3 Model-based / Abstract / Service-oriented / Semantic UI / HDI ...... 14

2.1.4 Distributed UI (DUI) ........................................................................... 15

2.1.5 Interaction-Oriented Software Engineering (IOSE) ........................... 15

2.2 The human interface and the hi:project .......................................................... 15

2.2.1 The project’s purpose ...................................................................... 16

2.2.2 The hi:project – nomenclature and definition ................................... 16

2.2.3 Adaption ........................................................................................... 17

2.2.4 The technology ................................................................................. 18

2.2.5 The objectives .................................................................................. 22

2.2.6 The business case for dissemination ............................................... 24

2.2.7 Next steps ........................................................................................ 25

3 Proposed research model .................................................................................... 26

3.1 The research question .................................................................................... 26

3.2 The research model ........................................................................................ 26

4 Future work ............................................................................................................ 27

5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 28

6 Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 29

Networked agency. Nine-month progress report. By Philip Sheldrake. Supervisors: Prof Wendy Hall and Dr Kieron O’Hara.

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1 Literature review

This short review addresses the concept of agency from various theoretical

perspectives, begins to consider sociotechnical agency as pertains the World Wide

Web, and briefly identifies user interface concepts that recognise user differences.

1.1 A dichotomy

“Agency refers not to the intentions people have in doing things but to their capability

of doing those things in the first place.” It implies power (Giddens, 1986).

“To be able to 'act otherwise' means being able to intervene in the world, or to refrain

from such intervention, with the effect of influencing a specific process or state of

affairs.” Giddens notes that to act is to ‘make a difference’ and that losing this facility

is the cessation of agency. He also emphasises that it isn’t so much a collection of

discrete acts but part and parcel of the flow of daily life.

Giddens and Sutton (2014) describe the 'problem' of agency and structure. They note

the early sociologists’ insistence that society and social forces (the structure) are

things that limit individual choice and freedom, specifically Emile Durkheim's

extension of the ideas of Herbert Spencer and August Compte on groups and

collectivities that contributed in part to defining the very discipline of sociology.

The structure / agency question is described as one of several related conceptual

dichotomies in sociology “rooted in sociology's attempts to understand the relative

balance between society's influence on the individual (structure) and the individual's

freedom to act and shape society (agency)." (Giddens and Sutton, 2014)

Campbell (2009) notes two conceptions of agency apparent in sociological reference

works. He describes “the power of agency” as an actor’s ability to initiate and

maintain a programme of action, and “agentic power” as the actor’s ability to act

independently of the social structure’s constraining power.

The emphasis placed on agency by sociologists has ebbed and flowed. Parsons

pointed out that the positivistic approach obscured the fact that man is, in essence,

an active, creative and evaluating creature. Positivists honed in on “causes” and


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“conditions”, and labelled attempts to talk in terms of ends, purposes and ideals as

“teleology” and therefore incompatible with positive science (Parsons, 1935). In

modern parlance, the positivists obsessed with structure over agency.

Social theory can never neglect agency again; quite the opposite. The “revolutionary

advances in electronic technologies and globalization are transforming nature, reach,

speed, and loci of human influence. These new realities present new challenges and

vastly expand opportunities for people to exercise some measure of control over how

they live their lives.” (Bandura, 2006). Bandura describes the growing, technologically

enabled primacy of human agency in education, health and occupational activities. He

goes so far as to assert that the very effectiveness of Internet use is contingent upon

personal enablement (Bandura, 2006, 1997).

Empirical studies have shown that the Internet facilitates agency, benefitting “a range

of citizen-activists” including: protesters against corrupt and dictatorial regimes;

traditionally marginalised, excluded or stigmatised communities; transnational social

movements; electoral underdogs; and alternative media producers (Coleman and

Blumler, 2009).

Technology must always be a component of agency; tools change our capacity to act.

1.2 A unification

To Giddens (2014), structure and agency are inseparable as two sides of the same

coin. Whereas structure had been considered primarily a constraint, Giddens also

identifies it as enabling of individuals. Moreover, the repeated actions of many

individuals reproduce and indeed change the social structure, a structure defined in

terms of rules and resources that enable such reproduction over time rather than as

some dominating external force (Giddens, 1986; Giddens and Sutton, 2014).

Structure and agency define each other. Giddens’ structuration theory moves from

dividing our object of study into separate, paired elements, to considering the two as

interdependent, no longer separate or opposed; from a dualism to a duality (William A.

Jackson, 1999).

The duality of structure is presented as (Giddens, 1986):


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Structure(s) – Rules and resources, or sets of transformation relations, organized

as properties of social systems

System(s) – Reproduced relations between actors or collectivities, organized as

regular social practices

Structuration – Conditions governing the continuity or transmutation of structures,

and therefore the reproduction of social systems.

As Giddens describes it, “the structural properties of social systems are both medium

and outcome of the practices they recursively organize.”

A theory of agency is equally important to cultural studies. Barker (2007) identifies the

concept as commonly associated with notions of freedom, free will, action, creativity,

originality, and the very possibility of change through the actions of free agents. He

does however appear to lend priority to structure, asserting that agency is unevenly

distributed because it’s “socially and differentially produced”.

Barker describes culturally generated agency as being enabled by differentially

distributed social resources giving rise to “various degrees of the ability to act in

specific spaces”. In other words, agency is determined by a socially constituted

capacity to act.

Giddens’ structuration theory is not unchallenged, per the greater emphasis lent

structure by Barker, and also Archer’s critique of structuration theory’s very essence.

1.3 A return to dualism?

Archer (2003) points out the lack of consistent definition of either structure or agent

before offering a working definition based on slim agreement: in some sense

'structure' is objective, whilst in some sense 'agency' entails subjectivity.

She identifies some inadequacies relating to the “popular desire” to “transcend” the

divide between objectivity and subjectivity altogether based on the recognition of

ontological inseparability by which each enters into the other's constitution. In

particular, Archer (1995) contends that structuration theory is incompatible with

emergence. Its treatment of structure and agency as inseparable is contradictory to


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“the very notion of ‘emergent properties’ which are generated within socio-cultural

systems” because “such structural and cultural features have autonomy from, are pre-

existent to, and are causally efficacious vis-à-vis agents.”

She asserts that the ways in which structure influences agents cannot be simple,

cannot be deterministic or Newtonian in its causes-and-effects, but rather then might

well involve the properties and powers of agents themselves (Archer, 2003).

“The account of how structures influence agents ... is entirely dependent upon the

proposition that our human powers of reflexivity have causal efficacy – towards

ourselves, our society and relations between them. However, reflexivity, which is held

to be one of the most important of personal emergent properties, is often denied to

exert causal powers – in which case it becomes considerably less interesting or of no

importance at all in accounting for any outcome.”

In exploring this question further, Archer seeks explanation for decision-making

processes. She argues that one: (a) has one’s own subjectivity that is real and

influential; (b) lives in a social world with distinct properties and powers that may

constrain or enable one’s actions ("causally influence"); and (c) is capable of reflexively

monitoring oneself whilst the social structure cannot. One is then able to adopt a

'stance' towards one’s social context.

In a departure from structuration theory, Archer contends that these three elements

must then require consideration of 'structure' and 'agency' as two distinctive and

irreducible properties and powers, and that human reflexive deliberations play a

crucial mediation role. This in turn requires that such ‘internal conversation’, in

mediating intentionally and differently, fallibly and corrigibly, be attributed three

properties: it must be (a) genuinely interior, (b) ontologically subjective, and (c) causally

efficacious.

Social cognitive theory (SCT) seeks to explain behavioural development in terms of

learning-by-observing and in so doing focuses on one’s reflexive monitoring. Bandura

(2006) notes that SCT rejects a duality between human agency and social structure.

He asserts (1989) a model of emergent interactive agency: “persons are neither

autonomous agents nor simply mechanical conveyers of animating environmental

influences. Rather, they make causal contribution to their own motivation and action


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within a system of triadic reciprocal causation.” That triad is personal factors,

behavioural factors, and environmental factors.

Agency may be exercised: through self-belief of efficacy – cognitive, motivational,

affective and selection processes; through goal representations – forethought and

anticipation; and through anticipated outcomes. Unsurprisingly, this means SCT

regards structure and agency as interrelated, “people are contributors to their life

circumstances, not just products of them. … People create social systems, and these

systems, in turn, organize and influence people’s lives.” (Bandura, 2006)

Referencing Meichenbaum (1985), Schunk and Zimmerman (1994), and his earlier

work (1986), Bandura writes (2006): “People who develop their competencies, self-

regulatory skills, and enabling beliefs in their efficacy can generate a wider array of

options that expand their freedom of action, and are more successful in realizing

desired futures, than those with less developed agentic resources.”

I am focused on agency in the sociotechnical context. How might the Internet, Web

and associated technologies help or indeed hinder people in developing the

competencies, skills and beliefs that Bandura identifies? How might they help or

hinder in terms of Archer’s subjectivity, reflexive monitoring, and social causal

influence? And Giddens’ duality of structure?

As noted by O’Hara et al (2013): “Structuration is relevant to Web Science because

that is what the technology does – it provides a series of constraints on behaviour,

while also affording opportunities.”

Berners-Lee (1999) observes that society arises in part from constrained processes.

He notes the creation of social machines on the Web: “processes in which the people

do the creative work and the machine does the administration.” Not content with this

division of labour from observation, Smart et al (2014) propose that social machines

“are Web-based socio-technical systems in which the human and technological

elements play the role of participant machinery with respect to the mechanistic

realization of system-level processes.”


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1.4 Agencement

Archer attributes the capacity for reflexive monitoring to a subjective agency and

asserts that structure is “in some sense” objective and its causal efficacy dependent

on agentic evocation. Nevertheless, if “reflexively monitoring” is taken to encompass

the potential to interpret and respond (the agency), we must consider the non-human

technological capacity for interpretation and response and whether such capacity

might be agentic and/or structural, and if structural in some way then perhaps

rendering a structural subjectivity in some way.

The French word agencement is often translated as “putting together”, “arrangement”,

“laying out”, but Wise (2011) insists that as it is used in Deleuze and Guattari’s work

it’s important to consider the act of arranging and organizing rather than any static

result. In this context the most common translation is assemblage, “that which is

being assembled.” He notes that an assemblage does not describe a predetermined

set of parts designed to make a specific whole, nor a random set for that would not

constitute a whole. Rather, “an assemblage is a becoming that brings elements

together.”

Callon (2005) extends the meaning of agencement into social theory (Phillips, 2006 on

Deleuze and Guattari). “Agency as a capacity to act and to give meaning to action can

neither be contained in a human being nor localized in the institutions, norms, values,

and discursive or symbolic systems assumed to produce effects on individuals.

Action, including its reflexive dimension that produces meaning, takes place in hybrid

collectives comprising human beings as well as material and technical devices, texts,

etc.”

Callon notes that these agencies include human bodies but also prostheses, tools,

equipment, technical devices, and algorithms. Actors are agencements. Actors and

technologies are agencements. The populations they enact via their mediations and

interactions are agencements. And the populations produce the subjects, the actors.

The inference then is that populations are also subjective: “… an object such as a

population is a ‘precarious accomplishment’, which needs to be studied rather than

assumed, not a singular entity but an outcome of multiple practices. Thus different


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devices are not different perspectives but … multiple enactments of populations.”

(Ruppert, 2011; referencing Mol, 2002).

Perhaps the duality of structuration theory and the dualism of structure / agency

consider agency and structure and their meld as objects whereas agencement

objectifies the tension, the flow, the dynamic.

Ruppert asserts that agency is mediated by particular sociotechnical agencement,

and agency is configured differently under different agencements ranging from

passive identification and classification with little or no engagement, through to full

engagement. Importantly she notes that as knowledge of a population is essential to

governing and the allocation of rights we must question how citizens can involve

themselves in enacting the population and how the citizen is then represented in that

enactment.

In addressing these questions Ruppert introduces the concept of “data doubles”

whereby a dataset proxies for the individual in this respect. This then entails a meta-

agency; if the data double as representative affects the data subject’s agency, what

agency does the data subject have over the corresponding dataset?

We should also ask what agency the dataset and the corresponding presentation and

interactivity have over the corresponding subject; and might this be considered

agentic or structural in some way? A segue to considering the role of algorithms and

intermediaries.

1.5 Algorithms, intermediary agency, and control

“When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.” Zittrain

(2012) attributes his turn of phrase to a similar assertion made on a popular online

forum: “If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being

sold.” (Lewis, 2010). The earliest statement of this ilk appears to be Serra and

Schoolman (1973): “The Product of Television, Commercial Television, is the

Audience. Television delivers people to an advertiser.”

Berg (2012) discusses this misalignment of motivations, advocating the conceptual

separation of individual-oriented and system-oriented agency. In technological terms

he refers to the front-end and back-end perspectives, with the front-end providing


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utility value to the user but with the monetary value derived by the service provider in

the back-end, largely invisible to or indeterminable by the user. The perspective of

system-oriented agency highlights this institutional behaviour and associated

monetization, and therefore Berg proposes that such social intermediaries are not

treated neutrally but “as distinct and somewhat independent entities. … a third actor.”

Lukas (2014), founder of the Quantified Self London Group, advocates a personal data

and software environment in which “expertise is supplied rather than outsourced” and

where each of us acquires “agency as sense-maker”. She insists: “We can’t treat

individuals as data cows to be milked for the data bucket.”

Barry (2001) considers the deeper and perhaps more sinister implications of this kind

of system-oriented agency. Referring to the disciplining techniques of power

described by Foucault whereby individuals are conditioned to align their behaviours

with the interests of the source of power wielding the disciplining strategy, Barry

makes the distinction: “Discipline implies normalisation: the injunction is ‘You must!’ In

contrast, interactivity is associated with the expectation of activity; the injunction is

‘You may!’”

On the face of it, ‘You may!’ may be read as ‘You may act otherwise!’, our starting

definition of agency; yet Barry advises caution. Interactivity may have different

significance in different situations, potentially becoming associated with particular

political strategies and other ideas. “Through the use of interactive devices, political

doctrine can be rendered into technical form. … Politics does not circulate just

through the flow of ideologies or rationalities of government, but through diagrams,

instruments and practices.” This corresponds to McLuhan’s (1964) assertion that the

medium is the message: “... the personal and social consequences of any medium –

that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into

our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”

Castells (2002) expresses concern at a different control mechanism, manifest in the

technologies of identification, of surveillance, and of investigation. “All rely on two

basic assumptions: the asymmetrical knowledge of codes in the network; and the

ability to define a specific space of communication susceptible of control.” Fuchs et al

(2012) put it quite simply: “The Internet enables a globally networked form of


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surveillance”, leading to what Zuboff (2015) describes as “an emergent logic of

accumulation in the networked sphere” she labels Surveillance Capitalism.

As web users engage with popular Internet and Web services, “they enter private

domains that come with new terms of entry. We can access the data we have turned

over to them, but only in exchange for willing submission to, among other conditions,

the forms of monitoring and control facilitated by the interactive infrastructure.”

(Andrejevic, 2007).

Hill (2012) notes that the responsibility for the translation of personal data into

information has passed from the state to corporations meaning that “multinational

corporations are manipulating what is stored and what is considered ‘good’

information”, relegating or discarding other stuff that cannot then be socialized and is

then consequently forgotten. He is alert to social conditioning (described as our

actions taken hostage) and the usurpation of roles (a dehumanisation), leaving “human

(reflexive) thought replaced with computer (determinant) thought.”

A similar disciplining concern may be inferred from Couldry (2014) when he writes: “…

we must be wary when our most important moments of ‘coming together’ seem to be

captured in what people happen to do on platforms whose economic value is based

on generating just such an idea of natural collectivity.”

Couldry posits that the success of some social media services – he refers to

Facebook – is based not just on connecting us to our immediate friends and family,

but by invoking a broader ‘we’, a collectivity extending way beyond our immediate

network. In making this broader connection, the service is setting itself up as the

arbiter of what’s happening, what’s trending, and so, importantly, by accumulation,

what matters. By corollary, the user is discouraged at best and disempowered at

worst from making this assessment herself.

Facebook was accused of bias in the selection of stories for its ‘Trending’ section in

the run up to the United States Presidential Election 2016 (Lee, 2016). Interestingly,

the accusation focuses on human intervention in the curation of the section, as if there

is an implicit assumption that the underlying algorithms would be neutral left to do

their work. Wired Magazine (Lapowsky, 2016) corrects that misconception:

“Algorithms themselves act as a reflection of their creators’ judgment in the search


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results they generate and the News Feed items they surface, automating the act of

editorial decision-making.” The article notes that people expect such decisions to be

independent of human judgement or bias, “that the machines can rise above the

differences that divide us. … When that turns out not to be the case, people feel

betrayed.” Eslami et al (2015) found that 25 of 40 Facebook users they interviewed

were unaware Facebook even employed algorithms for such things.

Whether it’s purely an output of software, or an output then subject to a human filter,

we are distanced from the selection criteria. As Couldry puts it: “… your story, my

story – really doesn't matter.” In Ruppert’s terms one might even say that your data

double’s story and my data double’s story do not matter; the only thing that matters is

a third party’s opaque interpretation of many data doubles in the aggregate. This

unprecedented distance and opacity erodes one’s facility to make a difference, one’s

agency. It also undermines the social agency of previously enacted populations that

are swept up in this subjective, biased distillation of the ‘bigger picture’.

Couldry observes that such machination “fractures the space of discourse”, alienating

individuals from the space in which they think they live – in which they think and act –

and delivering them into a stream of algorithmically governed sequences. He

expresses concern that a new model of social knowledge is emerging that is, for the

first time, independent of direct human action and meaning-making.

Lash (2002) explains why our interface with our increasingly technological life is of

critical concern: “In technological forms of life we make sense of the world through

technological systems. As sense-makers, we operate less like cyborgs than interfaces.

These interfaces of humans and machines are conjunctions of organic and

technological systems. ... We do not merge with these systems, but we face our

environment in our interface with technological systems.”

Lash points out that we must now operate as man-machine interfaces navigating

through technological forms of natural life, facets of which are increasingly constituted

at a distance unknown to pre-technological life forms.

We are contemplating “the technologization of life itself, the mediatization of life itself.”

(Lash, 2007). “When media are ubiquitous, interfaces are everywhere. The actual


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becomes an interface. People and other interfaces are connected by protocols that

connect an ever-greater variety of interfaces with one another.”

Lash compares the software algorithm with genetic coding, conveying by analogy its

role in constituting social life as DNA constitutes biological life. Yet unlike our

experience of previous social code expressed in law and in utterance and in

behaviour, the generative algorithm is “compressed and hidden”. “A society of

ubiquitous media means a society in which power is increasingly in the algorithm”; a

perspective shared and a conclusion echoed by Pasquale (2015).

This riles Lanier (2013). For him, conceding to the algorithm is akin to technological

determinism, a future in which people cannot invent their own lives, where we are

denied dignity and self-determination. Pasquale notes the paradox whereby the

“staggering” breadth and depth of data in the so-called information age is out of our

reach. It is information only for those who have the access to and mastery over the

data, ie, the few. More optimistically, Eslami et al (2015) conclude that encouraging

“active engagement” of the user with algorithms “can offer users agency, control, and

a deeper relationship with the platform itself.”

1.6 It’s complex

Johnson (2007) writes that complex systems contain a collection of many interacting

objects or "agents", and points out that for many complexity scientists its study is

synonymous with the joint study of agents and networks. He describes key aspects

including the effect of feedback on behaviour, system openness, and the complicated

mix of order and chaos.

Complexity science developed in the 1970s from cybernetics and systems theory.

Bhaskar (1979) first contemplated the complexities of social science in his

development of critical naturalism. He identifies the weakness of empiricism, its

obsession with cause and effect, inappropriate given the complexities of the human

and human society. Referencing Bhaskar’s conclusion (1989) “that the causal power


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of social forms is mediated through human agency”1, Archer (2003) notes that the

theory “is obviously ‘against transcendance’ because it is ‘for emergence’”.

In mapping complexity theory to social theory, Byrne and Callaghan (2013) find:

“individuals are themselves complex systems”; “they possess the power of agency

both individually and … collectively”; and “to say that collectivities possess agency is

to say collectivities have a reality beyond the individuals who constitute them.” The

authors make a fundamental argument for the nesting and interpenetration of complex

social systems beyond individuals.

Barker (2007), not one to let structure go under-emphasised, observes that human

culture and human biology have co-evolved and are indivisible. “… human beings are

both biological animals and cultural creatures. Any plausible attempt to understand

them must embrace the idea of holism and complex systems analysis.”

1Archer(2003)slightlymisquotesBhaskarinwriting:“…throughsocialagency”


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2 The interface

Technology and one’s facility to interact with it is central to agency: Callon’s

agencement of human and technical devices; Ruppert’s observation that agency is

mediated by particular sociotechnical agencement; Berg’s noting that one’s agency

may be attenuated by a technological third actor; Barry’s comparison of interactivity

with Foucauldian disciplining power; Zuboff’s disempowering surveillance; Hill’s and

Lanier’s concern for dehumanisation; Couldry’s fracture of the space of discourse and

erosion of direct human action and meaning-making.

As our lives become increasingly technologically mediated, any shortfall in ensuring

our sociotechnical agency is no less than our agency before, and any corresponding

failure to limit the third actor agency accrued by dominant Internet and Web services,

leaves each of us denuded.

Lash perhaps provided the best segue to this chapter when he writes that we operate

as interfaces and that interfaces are everywhere.

"The way you accomplish tasks with a product – what you do and how it responds –

that's the interface." (Raskin, 2000). Lash may be thinking more broadly, more

generically, than in terms of “product”, but Raskin’s definition nevertheless sets us up

to consider the interaction and integration of the socio and technical.

2.1 Catering to difference

Here I note some human-computer interaction (HCI) concepts each acknowledging to

varying extent that one person is different to another. As the title of a book by one of

Europe’s leading ergonomists puts it, it’s about fitting the task to the human

(Grandjean and Kroemer, 1997).

2.1.1 CC/PP and ARIA

CC/PP (Composite Capability / Preference Profiles) describe device capabilities and

user preferences. The former is sometimes referred to as the device’s delivery context,

guiding the adaptation of content for presentation on the device (“W3C CC/PP 1.0,”

2004).


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The corresponding W3C working group, Device Independence, focused primarily on

device capabilities and configuration rather than user preferences. Outstanding items

relating to the device work were completed under the auspices of the Ubiquitous Web

Applications working group, disbanded July 2010. The W3C Web Accessibility

Initiative took up the CC/PP specification with respect to user preferences for

accessibility, although progression of ARIA appears to have taken priority.

ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) employs semantic information about

interface components (widgets, structures, behaviours) to better enable the tailored

rendering of interfaces to persons with disabilities (“Accessible Rich Internet

Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0,” 2014).

2.1.2 User modelling

ARIA requires user modelling – an expression of the user’s accessibility needs. While

frequently associated with accessibility needs, the approach may be applied to cater

to characteristics not accessibility related (“User Modeling for Accessibility Online

Symposium,” 2013).

2.1.3 Model-based / Abstract / Service-oriented / Semantic UI / HDI

Model-based approaches were popularised in response to the proliferation of mobile

devices in the first decade of the century (eg, TERESA, USIXML, UIML). A

corresponding W3C activity closed in 2010 (Model-Based UI XG Final Report, 2010).

The approaches consider an abstract interface (independent of modality and

implementation technology), a concrete interface (modality dependent), and final

interface (modality and implementation technology dependent).

Model-based approaches are developing to work with and take advantage of Web

services architecture. This facilitates a complete abstraction of the function from the

presentation; for example, the model-based language MARIA (Paterno’ et al., 2010).

He et al (2008) describe an adaptive user interface generation framework for web

services based on web services description language (WSDL). The framework intends

to automate the development of graphical user interfaces to suit varying uses and user

devices.


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A semantic UI enables interaction with the ‘Web of Data’ / the semantic web in a more

contextually specific manner than a semantic browser. At this juncture, the interface is

abstracted to the point where Mortier et al (2014) consider the focus to be human data

interaction (HDI).

2.1.4 Distributed UI (DUI)

Melchior et al (2009) describe a DUI as a multi-purpose, peer-to-peer proxy that can

render a UI for any user, operating system, platform and/or display. Elmqvist (2011)

expands this definition to those UI “whose components are distributed across one or

more of the dimensions input, output, platform, space, and time.” Kovachev et al

(2013) explore the ‘widgetization’ of DUI.

Mikkonen et al (2015) conceive liquid software – the facility to make a user’s

heterogeneous devices work better together with interaction moving seamlessly and

contextually between them.

2.1.5 Interaction-Oriented Software Engineering (IOSE)

Software engineering is machine oriented for specified sociotechnical system (STS)

requirements, and while the resultant machine may be architecturally distributed, it is

conceptually monolithic (Chopra and Singh, 2016; citing Lamsweerde, 2009).

IOSE places the emphasis on the STS, focusing on social protocols rather than

implementation, specifically how social relationships progress as parties interact.

“IOSE adopts the accountability representation to capture the meaning of a social

machine's states and transitions.” It entails parties invoking their own SE-machine to

help them participate within the corresponding social protocol (Chopra and Singh,

2016).

2.2 The human interface and the hi:project

The USB Forum has a working group called Human Interface Device (HID)2. Guidelines

for developing application and device user interfaces (UI) and experiences (UX) are

2http://www.usb.org/about/dwg_charter/


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sometimes known as Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). Apple may have been the first

to publish such guidance (Apple Human Interface Guidelines, 1987).

This section is dedicated to the human interface as defined by the non-profit

hi:project3. I started the project in 2012 and regular contributors in recent years

include Steve Taylor, Christina Bowen, Jeremy Ruston, Adrian Gropper, Ian Brown,

Laura James, Henry Story, and John Laprise.

2.2.1 The project’s purpose

“The ultimate information technology challenge is the care and maintenance of a

digital infrastructure that can help us rise up to so-called super wicked problems,

collectively. Given the growing appreciation of the nature of complexity and the

complexity of nature, we know we’re in the domain of systems thinking and

sustainability – the health and resilience of living systems including our planet, our

societies, and our organisations.

… Sustainability requires healthy, distributed networks, with both diversity and

individual agency, to facilitate the emergence of collective intelligence. It is these

qualities our digital technologies must enable and encourage.” (Sheldrake, 2015a).

2.2.2 The hi:project – nomenclature and definition

The human interface project (the hi:project) describes an HCI concept and a

supporting team intent on bringing the concept to life and securing broad

participation. The term “human interface” was chosen4 to be distinct from the more

common term “user interface”5 and yet remain sufficiently familiar. The nomenclature

is intended to convey different attitudes towards the individual concerned.

While user means a person who uses or operates something, it’s not entirely irrelevant

to note that the word also describes a drug addict and might even connote

exploitation. In the context of UI, a user is a customer (payment in currency or in kind,

directly or indirectly) viewed by the product supplier through the lens of the product.

3http://hi-project.org/4TheprojectacquireditscurrentnameJanuary20145AGooglesearchestimates61,000,000resultsfor“userinterface”and411,000for“humaninterface”,14:42,21June2016,NoCountryRedirect,Englishlanguage


17

While the organisation may aspire to put the customer first, so to speak, it only does

so within its own realm. For example, as noted in 1.5, as products are replaced by

product service systems, any commercial imperative to secure ongoing monetization

potentially puts the service provider’s needs in competition with those of the user. You

might wish to explore your LinkedIn social graph extensively for example, but as such

facility would undermine LinkedIn’s monetization of the social network you are

restricted to using its UI through which your queries are throttled.

In contrast, HI unequivocally gives unassailable pre-eminence to the individual / the

person / the human, and the corresponding idea of human-centricity is then more

expansive and more potent than user-centricity, encompassing the full gamut of

human life and agency rather than domain-specific services with otherwise

unavoidable third actor agency.

I extend Raskin’s definition of the interface to distinguish UI and HI. The way a

machine or service helps you accomplish tasks with or through it, that’s the user

interface. The way your software helps you accomplish tasks with other software,

that’s the human interface.

It would be both confusing and inappropriate to call the individual served by HI the

user, and simply substituting human in the singular sounds too detached and frankly

somewhat odd. Therefore, I adopt the placeholder name “Alice”.

The UI belongs to the end- or intermediate machine or service, and ultimately to the

provider of that machine or service. The HI belongs to Alice. It supports many of the

attributes scoped by attendees of the 22nd Internet Identity Workshop to describe

sovereign technology and does not detract from the others (Sheldrake, 2016).

Simultaneously, Alice has a digital self and a self with digital presence.

Simultaneously, her HI is her and it is her representative, her agent. Simultaneously, it

is core to her agency and must be subject to it.

2.2.3 Adaption

According to Raskin (2000) “an interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs

and considerate of human frailties. If you want to create a humane interface, you must


18

have an understanding of the relevant information on how both humans and machines

operate.”

Traditionally, the user is required to adapt to the UI. We all have different digital,

numerical, information and visual literacy, and many people have one or more

disabilities, yet UI/UX designers cannot cater to this variety (“The hi:project website

homepage,” 2016). Some of the interface concepts described in brief earlier collect

user information describing such differences and then customise the UI to better meet

the user’s needs. The product / service provider controls the type of user information

collected and the bases by which that information is used to select from the options

available, the variety of which may be dictated by cost-benefit analysis.

In contrast, HI adapts the data exchange, its presentation and the interaction with the

machine or service to Alice’s needs. HI can aspire in the longer-term to be ‘just right’.

Alice’s HI software exists to personalise her interface and will, subject to establishing

a corresponding broad and deep ecosystem (2.2.6), be able to call on a massively

more diverse set of components to achieve this goal, under her control.

HI not only adapts to Alice but with Alice. As Doc Searls of ProjectVRM and the

Berkman Center for Internet & Society points out: “We’re all human. We’re also all now

on one worldwide network, and we need to keep that human too. Nothing is more

human than our differences — not only from each other, but from our former selves,

even from moment to moment and context to context.” (“The hi:project: Champions,”

2016).

2.2.4 The technology

As Web of Data6 developments decouple the app from the data, the hi:project

decouples the interface from the app (Sambra and Sheldrake, 2015). The hi:project re-

imagines the interface as a lightweight artefact that can be shared within a

community-based ecosystem. Participants are able to freely copy, modify and share

improved or customised components, distributed and discoverable across a named

data network architecture7 such as those proposed and developed by the Named

6https://www.w3.org/2013/data/7LikelyaNDNoverIP,atleastpriortoanypossiblefuturetransitionawayfromIPtowardspureNDN.


19

Data Networking Consortium8, MaidSAFE9 and IPFS10, with provenance recorded in

distributed ledger.

Figure 1 portrays the construction of Alice’s HI. Alice’s ‘smart’ devices are portrayed

as authentication today requires them. The collection of devices / environments at the

top of the diagram represent a ‘fog’ (distributed around us) as opposed to today’s

cloud (centralised ‘above us’).

Figure 1 – construction of the human interface

The following sections outline the hi:framework, the hi:engine, the hi:profile, the

hi:components, the hi:ontology, the hi:cache, and hi:coin. The project’s designs and

technology are free and open source.

2.2.4.1 The hi:framework

The hi:framework details the hi:engine’s dynamics in terms of identifying service types,

specifying APIs, determining how to personalize the HI, the collation and maintenance

8http://named-data.net/9http://maidsafe.net/10https://ipfs.io/


20

of the corresponding personalization data, and how this may then be wielded in

selecting and assembling the hi:components available to it.

The hi:framework will be informed by existing model-based UI concepts – including

abstract, concrete and final HI – and will address three levels of interface. Provider HI

replaces a service provider’s UI. Service HI spans data describing Alice’s relationships

with multiple service providers of the same ilk; a number of retail banks for example.

The life facet HI enables Alice to review and interact with her life in the round,

spanning services; her complete financial situation for example by combining data

relating to banks, credit card issuers, mortgage providers, cryptocurrencies etc.

The framework will articulate a personal privacy profile to inform others how personal

data should be treated in compliance with local regulations and personal preferences

(Sheldrake, 2015b).

2.2.4.2 The hi:engine

The hi:engine is Alice’s personal software platform that assembles her personalised

interface. (The way your software helps you accomplish tasks with other software,

that’s the human interface.) It reads and writes to her hi:profile, calling the appropriate

hi:components as needed contextually for Alice’s interaction purposes. It also

maintains and communicates her privacy profile.

The hi:engine needs to learn from Alice, explicitly and implicitly. The simplest learning

capability might be considered sufficient to render a HI experience superior to the UI

equivalent, and such capability falls short of anything anyone might describe as

artificial intelligence (AI). The hi:project does not aim to develop AI capabilities yet will

explore the potential for integrating AI software and services developed by others to

enhance the HI experience. The hi:project may, for example, be the ‘Open Interaction’

partner to OpenAI11.

As and when service providers’ application programming interfaces (APIs) migrate to

Linked Data format (and perhaps the hi:project might encourage such a transition), the

11https://openai.com/


21

hi:engine may act, less contextually, as a personal and personalised semantic web

browser.

The hi:project does not aim to develop new approaches to personal identity and

authentication; it is agnostic in this regard, enabling Alice to select her preferred

approach(es) / service(s).

The hi:project is agnostic in terms of personal data stores. It will interoperate with

such products and services, but stores are less relevant when personal data are

available from source near instantly for personalised combination, presentation and

interaction. Some storage facility may be pertinent with respect to data portability

(changing service providers), and data backup will alleviate the disruption otherwise

caused by the unexpected cessation of a service for whatever reason.

2.2.4.3 The hi:profile

Alice’s hi:profile informs the assembly of her HI in the moment. It is available and

synchronised across platform / device / environment, and is subject to constant

revision in terms of:

• Customization – the explicit statement of preferences (“I prefer …”)

• Crowd – learning from collective behaviours (“People who … prefer …”)

• Segmentation – identifying similarities between individuals (“People like

you …”)

• Personal – implicit, interpreting the individual’s specific proclivities.

Pooling hi:profiles to enable such statistical analyses will be subject to the same

privacy preserving techniques as for other personal data (2.2.5.1).

2.2.4.4 The hi:components

The materials the hi:engine works with: data and information models; graphical

libraries; methods for adapting information appropriate to the topic, the individual,

medium and context. The components will likely follow the model-based UI

distinctions of abstract, concrete and final interface.


22

2.2.4.5 The hi:ontology

The hi:components and hi:profile will be described semantically, for optimal

distribution and discovery in the case of the former.

2.2.4.6 The hi:cache

The cache of commonly used components, for reduced latency and for mesh / named

data network availability.

2.2.4.7 The hi:coin

Depending on the parameters of the technology adoption model, a crypto-currency

(hi:coin) may prove useful. Coin would flow from companies and other organized

entities to Alice by way of payment for access to her HI (and potentially her personal

data), and from Alice to developers by way of design bounties, and from developers to

companies by way of developer remuneration in fiat currency.

2.2.5 The objectives

The hi:project aims to help: solve personal data and privacy; secure a citizen-centric

Internet and Web; and transform accessibility and digital inclusion. Each objective

benefits agency.

2.2.5.1 Personal data and privacy

The interface is the locus of Alice’s data / information and the nexus of her contextual

privacy parameters (Sheldrake, 2015c). By having domain over her interface, by

exchanging only that data directly related to the provision of a service (HI has no need

for third party cookies), in being explicit about her privacy expectations, and by

adopting end-to-end encryption, Alice has improved domain over her personal data

and privacy. With that capability and confidence comes greater facility to ‘act

otherwise’.

Personal data must be allowed to breathe for it to be of most value to the individual

and society (Sheldrake, 2014), by which I mean (a) the context of similar datasets is

needed for the useful transformation of personal data into personal information to

assist Alice’s comprehension and sense-making, and (b) there may be societal value


23

in Alice’s data aiding our collective comprehension and sense-making of populations.

The hi:project can support all variety of techniques emerging to facilitate this data

pooling and analyses whilst preserving personal privacy; both distributed and

centralized in nature.

The project aims to facilitate meaningful compliance with personal data legislation

such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“Protection of personal data,”

2016).

2.2.5.2 Citizen-centric / redecentralised Internet and Web

A distributed architecture has no point of centralisation, of mediation, of control;

including then the presentation and interaction layer. Any architecture for

redecentralisation that fails to address this layer may be hi-jacked at the UI by the

dominant mobile OS vendors and social networks. Alone, decentralising innovations

lower in the stack cannot disrupt the centralising dominance of these companies;

indeed, they may simply make this oligopoly appear all the more vital to users.

As industry analyst Benedict Evans points out (2015): “it's the operating system itself

that's the internet services platform, far more than the browser, and the platform is not

neutral.” Witness the current ‘de-appification’ trend, where app use declines with the

growth in conversational / messaging, bot-based and voice-activated UI (Pavlus,

2015) (Belsky, 2014) (Adams, 2014) – a development dominated by Apple’s Siri12,

Google Assistant and Home13, Amazon’s Alexa and Echo14, Facebook’s Messenger

Platform15, and Microsoft’s Cortana16. All these companies are OS vendors with the

exception of Facebook.

These product service systems crave context and are therefore closely related to the

interest each of these companies has in ‘owning’ the Internet of Things; in fact, then,

an Internet of Their Things. By contrast, “everything gets an interface when the citizen

brings her own.” (Sheldrake, 2015b).

12https://www.apple.com/ios/siri/13https://home.google.com/14https://amazon.com/oc/echo/15https://messengerplatform.fb.com/16https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/cortana/


24

That is not to deny the value of such services, just to situate them as services to be

selected and controlled by Alice through her HI. In doing so, their third actor agency is

attenuated to the accretion of Alice’s.

HI is a distributed architecture by design; indeed, I don’t believe it could exist in any

other way. I contend however that decentralisation cannot be marketed (Sheldrake,

2015d). “We cannot secure decentralization with a project for decentralization, but

rather because of a project that delivers other compelling value. … if we know where

the value lies for organizations and for individuals, we can design for decentralization

to re-emerge in consequence.”

2.2.5.3 Accessibility and digital inclusion

“As with race, gender, and sexual orientation, we are in the midst of a grand re-

examination. … disability may turn out to be the identity that links other identities …”

(Davis, 2002). This new era “ushers in the concept that difference is what all of us have

in common. That identity is not fixed but malleable. That technology is not separate

but part of the body. That dependence, not individual independence, is the rule.”

Davis proposes a new guiding principle: Form follows dysfunction.

HI doesn’t “cater to” or “accommodate”. HI doesn’t need to include anyone because

it never excluded anyone. HI is simply informed. The HI form follows our differences

and encourages us to explore our differences, together.

If agency is “socially and differentially produced”, perhaps then its distribution might

become more even.

2.2.6 The business case for dissemination

HI will be seeded with people through the organisations that feature in their digital

lives, likely starting with business-to-consumer relationships. The commercial benefit

to these organisations takes two forms.

First, HI is a superior experience to UI. It’s respectful of Alice. It builds participation,

trust and loyalty, and secures market differentiation for the earlier adopters. It entails

no capital expenditure and lower operating expenses. It assists with legal compliance,

and switching costs are expected to be less than an iteration of current UI.


25

Second, commercial value in a data-oriented relationship does not come from the

data per se but from its contextual and permitted translation into actionable insight.

Cross-domain data aggregation is required to determine this context, and the

dominant OS vendors and social networks have no rivals in this regard. Nor are they

rivalled in terms of their ability to offer associated permission management. This very

small group of players then has substantial commercial power acting as data flow

tollgates.

Google generated average revenue per user (ARPU) of US$45 in 2014 (Meeker, 2014),

predominantly from its surveillance of web and app use for advertising purposes. We

might assume that the value of the data describing Alice’s continuous interactions

with a pervasive computing environment will be just as valuable to a toll keeper, and

quite possibly more so.

HI disintermediates and decentralises cross-domain contextualising and permissions

management, eliminating such mediation and related toll fees. Further, significant

operational risk is removed for all providers of services dependent upon these data

flows; absent HI, all incumbents have no choice but to proceed on the basis that one

or more mobile OS vendor / tollgate operator may decide to compete directly at any

moment, and with unmatchable advantage.

2.2.7 Next steps

The hi:project is designed to gain momentum with momentum; a diverse and

distributed community of multi-disciplinary experts, organisations, and Alice, exploring

and designing for our differences together. We expect Alice to show purchasing

preference for those organisations marketing their participation in and support for HI.

To get to that stage we need to develop the first versions of the hi:framework and

hi:engine, and likely the first core components for a provider HI experience in a

specific sector as proof of concept, eg, retail banking17. The project team is pursuing

commercial sponsorship based on the associated business case (2.2.6) and grant-

making foundations interested in decentralisation or digital inclusion.

17https://openbankproject.com/


26

3 Proposed research model

3.1 The research question

Agency and a distributed network topology are interdependent, and both are

considered critical to sustainability – the health and resilience of living systems

including our planet, our societies, and our organisations. My research will continue to

explore the question:

How does the agency afforded by the human interface concept compare to today’s

dominant architectures and services?

3.2 The research model

Secondary research will continue to focus on the theories of social science, cultural

studies, complexity, networks, and human-computer interaction.

I will develop a semiotic approach for the agentic comparison of architectures, and for

communication of the differences.

I will investigate the political, commercial, social, and technical constraints and

affordances effecting the viability of the hi:project.


27

4 Future work

My twelve-month plan:

Secondary research

• Further research of the UI concepts noted briefly in this report (2.1), specifically

their detailed models and applicability in the context of the hi:project

• Research into HCI theory and models.

Agentic comparison

• I will research techniques for describing technological architectures

symbolically

• I will refine a semiotic approach dedicated to agentic analyses and

understanding

• I will apply the approach to the hi:project and various current popular services.

Architectural viability

• I will explore the political, commercial, social, and technical constraints and

affordances effecting the viability of the hi:project.

Architectural development

• I will continue to develop the hi:framework and architectural detail.


28

5 Conclusion

Networked agency is affective – people can feel empowered and disempowered

without necessarily articulating the potentially complex causes. I have referenced

sociotechnical forms of detachment, of distancing, of obfuscation, and of surveillance,

that erode agency invisibly, introducing unprecedented social mechanisms operating

beyond one’s facilities to make a difference.

This situation is opposite to that expected or hoped for by the early Web community.

Moreover, the stakeholder ecosystem is now considerably more diverse and complex,

with greater commercial and societal interest invested, making any architectural

transformation in the direction of decentralisation, inclusion and agency all the more

challenging. But not impossible.


29

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