Social machines

Social machines as an approach to group privacy

Linnet Taylor, Luciano Floridi & Bart van der Sloot (eds.), Group Privacy: New Challenges of Data Technologies, 101-122

2016

Co-authors: Dave Robertson

Themes: Privacy, Social machines

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

This chapter introduces the notion of social machines as a way of conceptualising and formalising the interactions between people and private networked technology for problem-solving. It is argued that formalisation of such ‘social computing’ will generate requirements for information flow within social machines and across their boundaries with the outside world. These requirements provide the basis for a notion of group privacy that is neither derivative from the idea of individual privacy preferences, nor founded in political or moral argument, but instead related to the integrity of the social machine and its capabilities for bottom-up problem-solving. This notion of group privacy depends on a particular technological setup, and is not intended to be a general definition, but it has purchase in the context of pervasive technology and big data which has made the question of group privacy pressing and timely.

Social machine politics are here to stay

IEEE Internet Computing, 17(2), 87-90

2013

Themes: Politics, Social machines

Category: Journal article, The Digital Citizen

The US has always been ahead of the curve in digital politics. Its mega-campaigns collect and spend absurd quantities of cash, they last forever, and they’re run by the candidates, not the parties. Obama’s campaign was Obama’s, not the Democratic Party’s. The US provides space for entrepreneurialism and experimentation, not least in the use of technology. Other nations will follow its lead. And the stories were microblogging, social networks, and big data.