big data and social machines

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

david.deroure@oerc.ox.ac.uk

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

www.oerc.ox.ac.uk

david.deroure@oerc.ox.ac.uk@dder