Social machine

A social machine is an environment comprising humans and technology interacting and producing outputs or action which would not be possible without both parties present. It can also be regarded as a machine, in which specific tasks are performed by human participants, whose interaction is mediated by an infrastructure (typically, but not necessarily, digital). The growth of social machines has been greatly enabled by technologies such as the Internet, the smartphone, social media and the World Wide Web, by connecting people in new ways. The idea of social machines has been around for a long time, discussed as early as 1846 by Captain William Allen, and also by authors such as Norman Mailer, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Social machines blur the lines between computational processes and input from humans. They often take the form of collaborative online projects which produce web content, such as Wikipedia, citizen science projects like Galaxy Zoo, and even social networking site such as Twitter have also been defined as social machines. However, a social machine does not necessarily produce outcomes which directly affect the individuals or machines involved and an alternative viewpoint states that Social Machines are "rather than being an intentionally engineered piece of software - the substrate of accumulated human cross-system information sharing activities". Nigel Shadbolt et al. say that the telos of the social machine is specific to its participants, whereas the telos of a platform is independent of its participants’ purposes; the platform is there to facilitate communication. A social machine may also spread across more than one platform, depending on how its participants interact, while a platform like Twitter could host many thousands of social machines. An academic field investigating the idea has been active since Tim Berners-Lee's book Weaving the web. Social machines are characterised as 'social systems on the Web ... computational entities governed by both computational and social processes'.

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Related publications (1)

"The social machine". La destruction et réinvention de la machine de la consommation

Cecile Attardo, Rebecca Jordan

La consommation a atteint son apogée: le shopping mall. Machine artificielle et monde fantastique en même temps. Un point d’attraction par excellence pendant des décennies, qui arrive désormais à son terme avec l’essor de la digitalisation. Dans un monde dans lequel la consommation est digitalisée, une nouvelle machine surgit. Cette dernière se fonde sur les ambitions originelles de son ancêtre: constituer un nouveau centre urbain dans les zones périphériques de la ville qui nécessitent un lieu de vie sociale. Le nouvel organisme ne se connecte plus aux grands axes routiers situés aux extrémités des périphéries. Au contraire, il prend place dans les endroits les plus susceptibles de devenir les futurs centres: les gares. Il ne s’agit plus d’une boîte cachant un monde décontextualisé, mais d’un tapis urbain en continuité avec celui de la ville, qui redonne la place au flâneur et à la promenade urbaine. En son intérieur, un nouveau paysage urbain artificiel défile face au flâneur. A la place de la consommation, des expériences lui sont offertes. La structure neutre exalte différentes ambiances qu’il découvre tout au long de la plateforme. Soudain, des éléments plus spécifiques, tels que les confetti, attirent son regard et guident sa promenade. Le flâneur se retrouve ainsi absorbé par des atmosphères intenses, qui lui rendent son départ difficile. La consommation a été remplacée, la machine est réinventée.

2020