My friend Wendy Hall co-authored a 2019 book Social Machine Theory and PracticeI’ve only read recently. The central ideas of social machines are very interesting. Social networks connected by digital devices are large human social entities. These can be “good” or “bad” in terms of social outcomes, and most of the books are concerned with this question. “If you take the “social machine” critical phors seriously, you can think of them as computing. Well, it’s just too obvious how that’s going at this point.
So, should this book ask how social machines need to be analyzed and, importantly, try to build or shape them? When do you get filter bubbles or group thinking, and robustly diverse engagement towards a common purpose? The middle block of chapters examines many examples of social machines in operation, from music to social media, healthcare and open data for data. It ended in a somewhat unsatisfactory way with a list of questions and disciplines for future research, “Social machinery should not encourage pessimism even in optimism. It allows for new types of problem-solving and new types of pranks.”
I think the phalol is fruitful, but I think the prank side will be much more obvious in 6 years. BooksPublications of I was hungry for something a little more action-oriented.
