algorithmic self-governance for socio-technical systems
TRANSCRIPT
Algorithmic Self-Governancefor Socio-Technical Systems
Jeremy PittDepartment of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Imperial College London
FoCAS Summer SchoolHeraklion, Crete, 23-27/06/2014
Background and Context
The Digital Society
Characterised by an ‘ecosystem’ of socio-technical applications
Some are solving collective action problems
Distribution of physical resources, such as energy, water, etc.Management of a shared physical space, e.g. office, house,park, etc.Participatory sensing applications, e.g. traffic, congestion, etc.
A collective action problem, in general:
Involves a group of people working together in some commonspace, butIndividuals may have a self-interest which conflicts with thegroup interestThe costs of an action may fall on an individual, but thebenefits accrue to the group
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What’s bugging me?
The Mckinsey-isation of public and professional life
“Everything can be measured; and anything that can bemeasured can be managed.”RateYourLecturer.co.uk (don’t even get me started)The top-end UK education system produces every year peoplewho are zealously devoted to the abstract institution andutterly lacking in empathy with its human members
The commodification of social relationships and concepts
Friends are not people you can count on, just people you cancount (and sell on, e.g. sale of Facebook, Twitter accounts)Loyalty means: “stay with me long enough until I candata-mine the sh*t out of you and flog you stuff”Privacy: infiltration of legitimate protest groups, surveillance
The nudge mentality
Evidence-based policy-making is only for the reality-basedcommunity“die Wahl eines anderen Volkes zu empfehlen” (Brecht)
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Social Capital – A definition
From Ostrom and Ahn (2003) Social Capital . . .
. . . is an attribute of individuals that enhances their ability tosolve collective action problems
. . . has multiple forms: trustworthiness,networks/relationships, institutional context
Trust is the link between (forms of) social capital andcollective action
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Social Capital: Why It Is Important
‘Social Acetate’
The corollary of processes such as the McKinseyisation –,commodification –, nudge, etc. is to undermine trust.
This diminishes, to the point of obsolescence, all forms of socialcapital.
The obsolescence of social capital diminishes the prospect ofsuccessful collective action.
Without prospects and strategies for collective action we cannotproperly address local issues, like common-pool resourcemanagement, or global issues, like climate change.
We need to use ICT to fundamentally re-think – re-invent –re-discover – forms of social capital as a precursor to restoring(and going beyond) trust and empowering collective action.
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FoCAS Case Study
Aims and Objectives
We propose to apply the fundamental principals, methods andtechnologies of collective adaptive systems to restore trust in thenext generation of social networking/collective action applications
Aims
A thought experiment in the envisionment,design/specification and implementation (path) of asocio-technical system to support collective action
Objectives
Understand how formal models of social processes can informthe design of socio-technical systems, and the ecosystem ofsocio-technical systems, e.g. for Smarter Cities
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Governing the Commons
Introspection: How do people do it?
People are very good at “making stuff up”
In particular, making up and writing down rules toregulate/organise their own behaviour
Elinor Ostrom (Novel Laureate for Economic Science, 2009)
Common-pool resource (CPR) management by self-governinginstitutionsAlternative to privatisation or centralisation
Role-based protocols for implementing conventionalprocedures
Deliberative assemblies (Robert’s Rules of Order (RONR))
Self-organisation: change the rules according to other(‘fixed’, ‘pre-defined’) sets of rules
Self-determination: those affected by the rules participate intheir selection
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Institutions
Definition of an Institution
“set of working rules that are used to determine who is eligibleto make decisions in some arena, what actions are allowed orconstrained, ... [and] contain prescriptions that forbid, permitor require some action or outcome” [Ostrom]
Implicitly includes RONR
Conventionally agreed, mutually understood, monitored andenforced, mutable and nested
Nesting: tripartite analysis
operational-, collective- and constitutional-choice rules
Decision arenas [Action Situations]
Requires representation of Institutionalised Power
Extensive fieldwork to identify common features of ‘successstories’
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Sustainability of the Commons
Principles of enduring institutions: from ‘analysis’ to ‘supply’
Codify common features as institutional design principles
P1 Clearly defined boundariesP2 Congruence between rules and prevailing local environmentP3 Collective choice arrangementsP4 Monitoring by appointed agenciesP5 Flexible scale of graduated sanctionsP6 Access to fast, cheap conflict resolution mechanismsP7 No intervention by external authorities
P8 Systems of systems
Formal models of social processes
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Figure 1: Rules relationships: solid lines denote input and output of the rules; dashed lines denote chair assignment. (a) ...(b) ...
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Figure 2: Rules relationships: solid lines denote input and output of the rules; dashed lines denote chair assignment. (a) ...(b) ...
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Demand-Side Self-Organisation
Meet-the-Meter: a Serious Game environment for SmartGrids
Visualisation of Ostrom’s Institutional Design PrinciplesUse the SmartMeter for inclusivity, engagement andempowermentDelegation and aggregation of attention for ‘collectiveawareness’
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Affective Conditioning
MACS: Affective Conditioning for open plan offices
Self-organised norms for ‘acceptable’ behaviourInstrumentation for detecting/verifying non-compliantbehaviour and adverse reactionApologies and forgiveness for self-regulation
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Knowledge Commons
Interoceptive Collective Awareness
Social network for synchronisation, coordination andself-organisation
‘Big Data’ as a knowledge commons (pooled resource)
Participatory sensing applications with an equitable/reciprocalexchange of data for service
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Case Study: The Briefing
Envision and design a socio-technical system to solve a collectiveaction problem
Shared Space as a Common-pool resource
Four perspectives:
Interface, interaction and affordance design
Data and dataflow design
Protocol (implementation of institutional design principles)design
Architectural design
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Summary and Conclusions
Outlined a Case Study in algorithmic self-governance forsocio-technical systems
Requires principles of collective adaptive systems to solve acollective action problem
As well as gaining first-hand experience in designing a new type ofcollective adaptive socio-technical system, participants will broadentheir understanding of social networking, event recognition,self-organisation, collective intelligence and complex systems, allfrom an inter-disciplinary perspective.
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