COMP6044   Just another ECS Blogs weblog

Researcher: Jo Munson
Title: Can there ever be a “Cohesive Global Web”?
Disciplines: Economics, Ethnography (Cultural Anthropology)

Is now the time for a transparency and global cooperation on the web?

Can there ever be a “cohesive global web”?

The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect — to help people work together — and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner.

A hopeful inditement of the web’s potential from the “father of the web”, Sir Tim Berners Lee (Tim BL), but unfortunately, we are developing mistrust on the web. Whether or not it was the intention of Tim BL and other pioneers of the internet and the web, the power over the infrastructure and development of the web has long been routed in the Western English speaking world.

As the rest of the world has begun to engage with, depend upon and contribute to the web, the US/UK-centric view of the web is being challenged. This distrust for a web where 80% of web traffic is passed through US servers is not limited to the likes of the ever elusive and separatist nations such as North Korea, but by some of the largest economies in the world. Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff voiced her dismay at the NSA’s “miuse” of the web to spy on her private email and correspondence and duly threatened to install Fibre-optic submarine cables that link Brazil directly with Europe, bypassing the current connection via a single building in Miami. German, Mexican and French leaders are also outraged by being victims of the NSA’s “snooping”.

The world’s second largest economy, China, has long dissociated itself from the outside web and US ogliopolistic companies such as Facebook and Twitter, through the implementation of its “Great Fire Wall”. Whilst on the one hand Westerners may view such measures as restrictive, perhaps there is a protective element to such actions that in retrospect, we too may have aspired to.

Discontinuity in global web use is often far less politically motivated and often evades our press. It may shock you to know that Google is not the search engine of choice in some of the world’s most technologically advanced nations. This reaslisation leads me to wonder how other cultures use the web, how can the web work better for them? is the web fit for purpose to move into frontier nations where literacy is far from universal and the concerns rather more fundamental than a 140-character regurgitation of our lunch can cater for?

Why would we want a cohesive global web anyway?

I believe that for the web to establish harmony and be “fit for purpose” as it expands and develops into a global phenomenon, it will have to become more representative of its diverse user base. It seems to me that there are a great deal of reasons why having a cohesive centrally governed (or at least cooperatively governed) web would benefit global society, examples include:

• Economic growth / stability
• Social & political stability
• A more diverse pool of ideas / talent for invention and innovation
• Increased collaboration across nations
• Increased tolerance of other cultures
• Improved security & safety
• Improved use as a tool to combat poverty
• Improved cross-cultural communication

However, the world has had a fractious history – is it therefore too much to hope that the web could transcend our propensity to be territorial and militant? What else might the web be destined for if it cannot sit comfortably within a global society?

The aim of my report will be to assess how two distinct disciplines would approach the feasibility of a "cohesive global web" and how they might come together to approach the problem from a multidisciplinary perspective. I have chosen the following disciplines for my review:

• Economics – primarily because I believe that Economics can be seen in a wealth of our current usage and the “cost benefit” argument seems to play a big role in whether we choose to collaborate / engage with a concept.
• Ethnography (Cultural Anthropology) – because I believe we will only make progress with the concept of a cohesive global web by moving away from our Anglo-centric view and observing the thoughts and experiences of other cultures.

Next steps…

My understanding of both fields is currently naïve at best, so I am excited to discover how the two fields will affect my perspective, and how they will come together to form a research methodology for looking at the future cohesiveness of the web. In the next week I will be compiling a to do list for the remainder of the semester and beginning to delve into my disciplines of choice.

Sources

Nytimes.com. 2013. Log In – The New York Times. [online] Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/business/international/google-jousts-with-south-koreas-piecemeal-internet-rules.html?_r=0 [Accessed: 23 Oct 2013]

The Verge. 2013. Cutting the cord: Brazil’s bold plan to combat the NSA. [online] Available at: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/25/4769534/brazil-to-build-internet-cable-to-avoid-us-nsa-spying [Accessed: 23 Oct 2013]

Heine, J. 2013. Beyond the Brazil-U.S spat. [online] Available at: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/beyond-the-brazilus-spat/article5186893.ece [Accessed: 23 Oct 2013]

Illustration: Gade, S. Retrieved from: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/beyond-the-brazilus-spat/article5186893.ece

Having had time to look in to the two subjects (Geography and Biology) which I’m applying to user interface (UI) design, I’ve found a surprisingly large amount of topics, methods and skill sets within them which could be used by geographers and biologists to help answer my question. My next task will be to sort through all of them and reject the weaker arguments and develop the stronger ones, this could take a while…

Below, for those interested, are my brief (and badly written) notes on each and how they could apply, along with the textbooks I used (which, conversely, are very well written):

Geography – most information from these notes has come from “Practising Human Geography” (Cloke, Cook, Crang, Goodwin, Painter and Philo) and “Earth’s Climate, Past and Future” (Ruddiman)

Sifting, sorting and simplifying data – geographers use large data sets which often contain lots of anomalous and irrelevant data, drawing out the most important elements of something is a key skill which could be transposed in to producing a simple and easy to use UI.

Studies and public surveys – part of human geography includes sampling public opinion, while other geographers often examine physical structures (manmade and natural). Both of these produce useful data and are similar to user studies which are a key part of user centred design (UCD).

Set theory and grouping items – grouping relevant items together and finding links between different things would help to make a well laid out UI.

Quantitative and qualitative methods – when analysing data collected from studies these are useful skills for extracting meaning.

Statistical approach with inference – more methods for discerning information from data which are transferrable.

Awareness of the limitations of measurements – e.g. Children are measured as belonging to a household, when in reality they may move between two – this is a useful part of UCD which is often overlooked (in my experience). Many user studies do not properly analyse the limitations of their measurement techniques.

Town planning – the layout of a town is not dissimilar to the layout of items on a screen, both must take in to account the different types of people using them, as well as the underlying restrictions of the system they are built upon.

Cartography – refining very complex data in to simple form which is usable by almost everyone is an important goal for UI design, and one which cartography has mostly solved for it’s own data sets. Applying similar refinement techniques to other data sets could yield similar results. Cartography also has to consider the audience and the abilities of the users, which is a core principle of UCD.

Transportation geography – underground railway maps are a simple example of where this has produced a very usable interface by creating a vastly simplified and more readable version of the actual data, without loss of any of the relevant data (intersections between lines, etc.). A map of the actual paths of the London Underground lines is barely visible due to the scale that has to be used, but the version shown to the public is accessible to everyone, and even takes in to account disabled users.

Geology – layers in rock which contain different information could be (very tenuously) linked to layers of a UI containing different data. Although the metaphor breaks down, the mental model could be useful.

Cultural and socio-economic differences/demographics – accessibility if computer interfaces is very important, and geographers are familiar with analysing and segmenting people in to different groups which could be used to provide different experiences and interface types when using a computer program.

Observation of the world and people – this is an important part of UCD and geography

Breaking down objects in to functions – e.g. a city as a transport hub – computer programs can be seen as a collection of functions working together, which is similar to a city. This type of understanding is the opposite side of UI design to the user side, but equally important to make it functional and efficient as well as easy to use.

Climate – patterns on a small scale can be applied to large scale problems. This doesn’t always hold true, but it is usually a good idea to attempt to try/extend existing solutions before reinventing everything from scratch.

Weather – inference of future trends based on current and past patterns/data. Looking at how people have behaved before with other programs, and how designers/developers have done things before is important to learn what works and what doesn’t.

Erosion and removal of soft rock, leaving structural/important rock in place – the metaphor here could be used to remove excess and wasteful parts of the UI, leaving just the parts which are important

Ethical considerations – part of any user study is deciding what is acceptable and reasonable to do.

Systems theory – the interaction between different systems and parts of a system – this is used heavily in geography and applies to lots of areas

Biology – based on notes from “Campbell Biology” (Reece, Urry, Cain, Wasserman, Minorsky and Jackson)

Cell theory – cells are the building blocks of all life – building a UI could be analogous to building an organism, the whole is made up of lots of parts, each part has a function and each part is made up of smaller parts, then all of it has to work together.

Evolution and natural selection – applying these to UI design could see several possible designs being tested then the best parts of each combined to a new generation which is then tested again, until the best survives. Natural selection also suggests that the surviver will be the one which best suits the environment it is tested in, so there would be a possibility to produce several final versions for different users and scenarios.

Mutation – taking a working UI and changing parts of it could be used to avoid the local maxima problem.

Genetics – a core set of instructions/features – a program has a set of requirements which it exists to complete, these could be seen as the core genes of it which determine to a certain extent what it will have to look like.

Link between an environment and life that exists there – different experiences may be required in different places, for example on a train people behave differently to when they are at home in the living room, even though they are probably sitting down looking at a screen in both.

Emergent properties – the arrangement of smaller parts affects the properties of the larger object – the functionality of the whole has the ability to be more than the sum of the functions of the parts

Component parts – the view that something is built up from smaller sections into a whole

Properties of life:

Order – organisation of items in the UI
Evolutionary adaptation – a UI must change as the users’ needs change
Regulation – the flow of data which is displayed has to be managed
Response to the environment – a UI must change if the user changes environment or it is used by a different user in a new environment
Reproduction – this probably doesn’t apply…
Growth and development – users may have new requirements over time, or it may be necessary to create a basic version to start with and build on it for new releases
Energy processing – efficiency is important

Why would Web Scientists be interested in Gossip?

Gossip is defined as “idle talk; trifling or groundless rumour” between people and is usually thought of as being rather innocuous and of little consequence (OED 2013). The Web facilitates the free exchange of information regardless of quality or authenticity and this could be useful or contentious when mining the Web for data.

Gossip is a form of information exchange but unlike scholarly communication or financial transactions it is rarely coherent, uniform or predictable. The prolific use of the Web 2.0 in particular the social networking sites and micro-blogs allows gossip to spread between platforms and in different forms. A mosaic of verbal and pictorial information and more importantly combinations of the two spread throughout the Web.

Ultimately, gossip is a way of exchanging information in an informal and relaxed manner. Before Web scientists attempt to design or engineer new web technologies they must understand what the Web is being used for currently. This is of great use to Web scientists because it can help them understand how information can be exchanged faster and easier and how their efforts can facilitate this exchange.

The reader may feel that this review is nothing but mere folly and they could be forgiven for thinking that. However, the author would ask them to consider how the principles of gossip could be applied to more serious and practical fields e.g. disaster relief, management, law enforcement. Gossip transcends technical and social boundaries and so it will be of use when studying the Web as a socio-technical object.

Why Network Science?

Network science offers a near perfect set of techniques and practices for studying the Web. Due to the mixed lineage of this field it offers a variety perspectives of networks as social and technical entities. Biological networks are of interest as well – the study of other species such as cephlapods or bees could inform Web science about information exchange.

Network science leans upon sub-fields that have themselves been created from interactions by other disciplines e.g. graph theory (mathematics, computer science) and social network analysis (sociology and anthropology). This chimera of a discipline allows for the topic to be fully opened up and examined thoroughly by illustrating its interconnected nature.

Newman, Barabasi and Watts (2006:4) provide clear cut guidance as to why their discipline is different.

• It is focused on “real-world problems” and is willing to sacrifice theoretical purity for real world application.
• It views networks as dynamic entities and will not settle for static models.
• It aims to “understand the framework on which distributed dynamical systems are built”.
• It explains rather than describes networks and uses stochastic processes to understand the changes in networks.

It will provide a stimulating read to say the least and offers insights previously hidden in the fragments of other disciplines.

Why Marketing?

“The aim of marketing is to make selling unnecessary” Drucker (2001:20).

If gossip is the idle talk amongst people, marketing is the attempt to infiltrate this “idle talk” and make it into a profitable opportunity. Marketing provides a perspective borne out of commerce and academia and offers insight into how information exchange is made into a commercial product.

Marketing is made up of segments and channels. The segments are different markets and the potential consumers within them. The channels are the method by which a marketer will reach them and build a relationship with so as to continually acquire their custom. From humble posters in shop windows to multi-millionaire pound advertising campaigns, marketing is essentially about raising awareness through word of mouth. Marketers make use of traditional (offline) and digital methods and this means that the Web is of great importance to them.

Marketing provides a mixture of theatre and statistics. It has an array of metrics to measure the success of a commercial activity which can give marketing near-science like properties. It is heavily influenced by economics, business studies, psychology and computer science. Especially the statistical techniques and numeric concepts within these disciplines and how they can aid decision making. However, it also attempts to allure customers not through technical or economic measures but through appealing to consumer’s subconscious desires. For a campaign to be successful it must use art and design, music and even activism.

It will provide an opportunity to see how the Web is used to generate custom and subsequent profits. This demonstrates that gossip is used not just as a social mechanism but also as a commercial one.

Convergence of the two disciplines?

The emphasis on analysing social networks is an obvious property of both disciplines. It is not clear as to whether marketers have the capital (human, cultural, financial, physical) to utilise the same tools as network scientists. It may be the case that they can collaborate and share access to data and any insights gleaned from it. The interest in real-world social networks and observing them in real time is something that will be of use to Web scientists and will further extend their influence to other small-world networks.

P.S. This post was originally posted on 15/10/2013 – however, it failed to publish and only showed the title. The author apologises unreservedly for any technical blunders on their part.

This post will cover defining equality and looking at some of the arguments against equality.

In order to look at gender equality at all, let alone on the web in relation to philosophy, the first logical step is to go back to the very basic philosophical question of ‘what is equality?’. The idea of treating all human beings as equals originated thousands of years ago, and with that age old ideology comes differing views and definitions of equality itself. Philosophy commonly defines four different types of equality: moral/ontological, legal, political and social.

Moral/Ontological Equality: This type of equality has been defined in several ways, but all to the same end. One definition is “the fundamental equality of persons” which takes the religious view that all are equal under God. Others have a less theological take but still denote that all human beings should be valued the same, without preferential treatment irrespective of the situation. For example, the ‘all women and children out first (or debatably all wealthy women and children out first) principle’ used on the titanic, would not hold true.

Legal Equality: Otherwise known as ‘equality of result and outcome’; this advocates that all people should be treated the same with respect to the laws they have to follow, and subsequent retribution if they fail to do so. Historically in America, black Americans had a substantially higher chance of receiving a conviction or a harsher punishment than a white American; in a truly legally equal society, all citizens would be tried against the same standards, without taking race, gender, religion or any other factor into consideration.

Political Equality: This equalitarian stance otherwise known as is based on all members of a political community should have an equal say when it comes to making laws or voting in public elections. Therefore no country where anyone who is considered a ‘lesser citizen’ and therefore not allowed to vote (e.g women up until the 20th Century, or the working class until the 19th Century) could claim to be ‘politically equal’.

Social Equality: This is the idea that all members of a society should have equal access to it’s resources and equally benefit from it. The fact that realistically (certainly for Britain) more money can buy you better health care, debatably better education with access to private schools, and the fact that our country still arguably holds class divisions means that we do not enjoy social equality. Unfortunately even countries/governments that have attempted to use communism (a socialist movement to create a classless society) still suffered from corruption and attempts to un-equalise the balance.

After defining these different types of equality, would it then logically hold that ‘gender equality’ would be where both genders can enjoy all four types of equality with no differentiation between them; which would also mean that in terms of how both genders are represented on the web, the way they are viewed, their legal and political rights in relation to the web, and the resources they are allowed access to on the web, should be exactly the same for both?

There are many arguments against these definitions of equality, that therefore would potentially invalidate the question above, as those characteristics of equality would no longer hold true.

The first argument against equality is that different elements of equality aren’t compatible; society is not by design equal. Even if it were possible to conceive a true ‘classless’ society, jobs/salaries/positions within society would still be different, and therefore ‘unequal’; and why shouldn’t they be? If one position requires a higher skill level than another, why shouldn’t the most skilled person for the job secure it? This then poses the question ‘should everyone be afforded equal opportunities, or just the ability to gain the skills to gain access to those opportunities in the first place?’. In relation to gender equality therefore, shouldn’t women and men be given the same starting blocks, with the capacity to make of it what they will. One gender shouldn’t be automatically considered over the other for any position, it should be based on skill, but both genders should have the abilities to gain those skills. To look at this matter in relation to gender representation on the web, it would logically follow that both genders should have the ability to hold any position socially on the web (e.g both should be able to contribute to academic resources) and they should be judged on merit and knowledge not gender.

The second argument is that it is impossible to adhere to full social equality. To enforce such strict rules would be tantamount to introducing a totalitarian rule over society. It has also been argued that a totalitarian esque rule doesn’t work as human nature means that society will always eventually rebel against such a strict rule; rendering utter equality infeasible. It would therefore be almost as impossible to ensure utter gender equality on the web. It would still be marginally easier than ensuring it completely within society (as unless we drift into the fictional realms of totalitarian novels such as 1984; the government has yet to work out how to read or control our thoughts) as all web traffic and content can be monitored, but it would still be a monumental task.

The third argument is that radical steps towards equality aren’t necessarily desirable. At what point would we be compromising our personal liberty in favour of forced equality? This resonates with the popularly quoted concern ‘political correctness gone mad’. Has the desire to treat everyone equally, and not cause offence irrespective of gender, race, religion etc gone too far? At what point would say a gender inequality based joke or phrase e.g ‘get back in the kitchen’ be considered a point of humour between friends, and at what point would it be regarded as blatant sexism and an example of gender equality?

My essay will address equality in it’s origins looking at all of these different types, in addition to the arguments against them to study how one would go about ascertaining the representation of gender equality on the web from a philosophical standpoint.

[1] D. Johnston “Plato, ‘Democracy and Equality'” in Equality, Indianapolis, USA: Hacket Publishing Company Inc, 2000, ch. 1, pp. 1-9.
[2] B. S. Turner “Types of Equality” in Equality, student ed. New York, USA: Tavistock Publications Limited, 1986, ch. 2, pp. 34-56.

In June 2010 the US and Israel are alleged to have attacked Iranian nuclear facilities. This assault was not carried out by an aerial bombing raid or any conventional military action. Instead, a number of devices at several sites which had been infected with a worm called ‘Stuxnet’ began faking industrial process control signals. This led to centrifuges used in the uranium enrichment process spinning several times faster than their mechanical tolerances would allow. Many centrifuges were destroyed and the enrichment process was severely disrupted.

This malware is the first example of nation states relying exclusively on malicious software to further a major foreign policy aim. It marks the introduction of a new form of warfare between countries, one which is perhaps more dangerous than any other kind, as unlike conventional conflicts, potent weapons become available to non-combatants and can be analysed, adapted and redeployed. Stuxnet spread beyond the Iranian industrial centres it was designed to attack (it is believed that a technician took an infected device, a laptop or possibly a memory stick, home and connected Stuxnet to the Internet). From there it infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world and was even traded on the black market. In fact two of the most sophisticated pieces of malware of the last 2 years (Duqu and Flame) are considered to be expansions of Stuxnet.

However, this new kind of warfare is also depressingly similar to older forms – it led to retaliatory cyber-attacks on American and Israeli institutions by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, there was an exchange of propaganda as America and Israel denied all knowledge of Stuxnet while the Iranians sought to underplay its effectiveness and there was an increase in the determination and belligerence of all participants – analysis has shown that Iranian uranium enrichment actually increased in 2010, and the assassination of Iranian scientists involved in the programme began in earnest.

Disciplines:

1. Historical

I want to try and place Stuxnet in some kind of historical context. Was it really the first time a nation had attacked another nation with malware for foreign policy purposes? What are the parallels with previous arms races? Can previous conflicts (cyber and conventional) give us guidance on how this new kind of warfare is likely to develop?

2. Ethical/philosophical

Is electronic warfare ‘preferable’ to conventional warfare? No lives were lost (that we know of) through the use of Stuxnet, whereas a conventional US/Israeli attack on Iran would certainly have escalated and led to significant loss of life. Is this a new ‘clean’ kind of warfare? Will it reflect the post-war arms race and the concept of a nuclear deterrent? Will there one day be malware so dangerous it will force an uneasy peace?

My proposed title for this assignment is ‘Who benefits from MOOCs?’. These ‘Massive Online Open Courses’ have been in the ed/tech news quite a lot recently, and the University of Southampton has also got involved by joining the Open University’s collaborative Future Learn project with a number of other UK universities. Actually, the phenomenon first appeared back in 2008 at a university in a Canada, but in quite a different form to the more well-known courses promoted in some high-profile American universities.

Whatever their (fairly brief) history, these courses have aroused considerable interest in universities, the media, and investors, perhaps because of the number of potential participants (for ‘participants’ read ‘punters’?). Some courses, it seems, have indeed attracted large cohorts of students – an MIT course in electronics registered 155,000 learners last year, though far fewer (around 7,000) actually successfully completed it (Daniel, 2012).

But what can students (whether they complete or not) take away from their experience? Hopefully they learn some interesting things along the way, and possibly make some useful connections with like-minded individuals. However, for those that complete such courses, obtaining certification or formal recognition of achievement is problematic in a number of ways. It is difficult for institutions to ensure the integrity of tests results, and few universities recognise completion of MOOCs in terms of academic credit.

What’s more, designing and implementing online courses is not cheap, quick or easy (even though many optimistic departmental managers seem to imagine that a simple ‘cut and paste’ job on existing face-to-face course materials will do the trick). A key feature of MOOCs is their second ‘o’ for ‘open’ (which entails, according to most commentators, free). To provide meaningful, effective and attractive online courses is not simple (hence Les’ efforts to tap our ideas in recent FoWS lessons?) and yet universities will presumably need to justify the substantial use of resources for their construction.

So, if the completion of a MOOC has questionable value to a student facing university admissions departments or prospective employers, and universities themselves have to invest in their development, but give them away for free, who benefits from MOOCs?

I’d like to approach this question using ideas from economics and philosophy:

Economics

Although economics is often associated with the allocation of resources in business and private enterprise, public goods such as education are significant factors in the models which economists use to understand societies, economies and human activities within them. However, phenomena such as MOOCs constitute a fairly radical shift in the way education might be conducted and delivered (free to users, huge potential cohorts, geographically unconstrained, difficult to certify). This shift raises a number of questions:

• How do these new courses challenge our understanding of supply and demand in higher education?
• Knowledge is “a public good par excellence” (Gupta, 2007), but who should provide the resources to enable such massive and open access to knowledge?
• How might a ‘social cost-benefit analysis’ of MOOCs be effectively conducted in terms of a student cohort which is geographically dispersed across national boundaries?
• In what other ways might the potential economic benefits (or drawbacks) of MOOCs be analysed?

Philosophy: 

From the range of sub-fields included within this discipline, I think epistemology and existentialism may provide interesting ways in which to analyse my research question. Epistemology deals with defining knowledge and attempting to understand the ways in which humans can acquire it. It might be interesting to look at the ways in which people perceive and value knowledge which is given away for ‘free’ by universities, as these institutions have previously put conditions and restrictions on student access to the knowledge which universities possess. This idea relates to an important concern in epistemology, namely the sources of knowledge.

From my brief survey of some basic literature, it seems that there is little consensus on a precise definition of existentialism. However, its fundamental concern with the individual, free will, and the individual’s responsibility for their own actions and the consequences of them may have relevance to this subject. It might be interesting to explore an existentialist view on the ways in which individuals can benefit from participation in MOOCs regardless of the (lack of) incentive of accreditation for their achievements – an existentialist might argue that it is enough to participate in such courses sincerely and with passion.

The lack of value placed on participation in or completion of a MOOC (by universities/employers/society more widely) could be seen to be in line with the existentialists’ view of the external world’s ‘indifference’ to individuals – though this does not, for them, necessarily entail any disincentive for an individual to continue striving within an indifferent world.

References

Daniel, J. (2012) Making Sense of MOOCs: Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility. JIME. 18 pp. 1-20 Available from: http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/jime/issue/view/Perspective-MOOCs [Accessed 12 Oct 2013]

Gupta, D. (2007) Economics – a very short introduction. Oxford: OUP

Temple, C. (2002-2013) Existentialism. Philosophy Index. Available from: http://www.philosophy-index.com/existentialism/ [Accessed 11 Oct 2013]

Temple, C. (2002-2013) Epistemology. Philosophy Index. Available from: http://www.philosophy-index.com/philosophy/epistemology.php [Accessed 11 Oct 2013]

Issue: How to reach a global consensus on the balance to be struck between the right to freedom of expression and content which should be illegal on the web.

Background

Prior to the web, content classed as ‘undesirable’ (including that classed as antisocial, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, racist, malicious, threatening, abusive, or undesirable religious or political propaganda) could be regulated far more effectively.

1. Because the mediums used to distribute it were easier to control

2. Each jurisdiction could decide, make and enforce their own regulation on how the balance should be struck.

However, in the wake of the web, concerns have erupted surrounding the ease of propagation of content which could be deemed desirable in one jurisdiction and undesirable in another.  The ease of accessing information originating from another jurisdiction makes it almost impossible to enforce national laws on a medium that does not recognise national boundaries.

Gaining global consensus as to the standard/ type/ level of content that should be available on the web has proven difficult.  Unlike the approach to fraud or hacking, where, despite differences, a consistent philosophy and approach can be seen among jurisdictions, the balance struck between freedom of expression and illegal content varies greatly from one country to another. Certain governments are more sensitive about the expression of some political or religious views and definitions of obscene or pornographic material vary from place to place.

Therefore, how do we harmonise these different views?

Disciplines:

Mathematics 

Mathematics is the science which deals with the logic of shape, quantity and arrangement. Many situations can be represented mathematically and many ‘real world problems’ can be solved using mathematical models. I will be looking to critically analyse whether it is possible to use a mathematical model to decide what content should and should not be deemed desirable on the web.

Anthropology

This is the study of humankind. It draws and builds upon knowledge from the social and biological sciences and applies that knowledge to the solution of human problems. I am particularly interested in ‘sociocultural anthropology’ which is the examination social patterns and practices across cultures, with a special interest in how people live in particular places and how they organise, govern, and create meaning. I will be looking to use anthropology to understand why different jurisdictions have different approaches to the regulation of content online and whether this knowledge can be used to understand better where the aforementioned balance should be struck.

Reading List:

Garbarino. Merwyn S. ‘Sociocultural theory in anthropology: a short history’  (1977) New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, c1977.

Hannerz U. ‘Anthropology’s World: Life in a twenty-first-century discipline’ (2010) London : Pluto

Haberman R. ‘Mathematical Models: mechanical vibrations, population dynamics, and traffic flow : an introduction to applied mathematics‘ (1998) Philadelphia, Pa. : Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Taylor, Alan D ‘Mathematics and politics : strategy, voting, power and proof’ (1995) New York : Springer-Verlag

In the 1987 revision of his book Computer Lib [1], Ted Nelson wrote:

EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an important sense there are no “subjects” at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly. Hierarchical and sequential structures, especially popular since Gutenberg, are usually forced and artificial. Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged—people keep pretending they can make things hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can’t.

I’m not sure the Web has yet caught up with Nelson’s vision of  Project Xanadu, or the degree to which it is practical to do so. But, he makes a good point about the weakness of relying too much on hierarchy. Hypertext makes possible a wonderfully interconnected Web which has been a daily source of improvement and enjoyment. However, much of it feels like moving around a big box-and-line diagram, merely mapping nodes and links. Frequently, web usage is continuous a loop in and out of search tools (like Google) between individual or small clusters of pages, rather than following richly linked data strands.

Richer linking is less common. Although many links may be present in a document many are simply in-page/site navigation links or SEO-aiding faux page breaks. Also, the paucity and sterility of links may reflect the economic approach of finding and trapping eyeballs – why send people to your competitors, by linking to them? Links to, or through, paywalls are also of suspect value. Meanwhile, given the node-and-link model, we tend to envision the web as hierarchy – or a directed graph at least. A less intertwingled reality, it seems.

My experience from writing documentation and software community support has shown it surprisingly hard to achieve sticky knowledge transfer except when working at or close to one-to-one scope; not  very efficient. The lazy reaction is to blame the learners, but I’m open to the thought that as authors of hypertext, maybe we’re not doing this right. Perhaps we need to use a different tack and be less shallow in our weaving of the Web, offering the reader more routes to their goal of knowledge. More intertwingularity, applied with some thought, might move us forward. Approaches like spatial hypertext and techniques from hypertext fiction may help, even if currently egregious compared to standard practice.

Figure: Early stage planning in Tinderbox

Serendipity strikes, as now I’m being asked to look at a Web issue through the eyes of two different disciplines. Those I’ve selected as showing promise in providing a useful alternative view to the above, are:

• Psychology. This studies the human mind and behaviour, seeking to explain how we feel, act and reason. The intuited relevance to my topic is that a better understanding of our reasoning – and motivation for behaviour – might allow us to make smarter choices about how we author hypertext, to meet and reward those motivations.
• Literary Theory. This discipline seeks to describe the methods and ideas we use in the – reading and understanding of literature. A set of tools, if you will, by which we may understand literature. It will be interesting to see how the non-linearity of Hypertext fiction fits current theory.

I’m unsure as yet how narrow we may set our disciplinary scope here as, within the above, Cognitive Psychology and Narrative seem sensible sub-topics. Within the Literary Theory and indeed Narrative, culturally-based sub-sets with doubtless exist: does one size fit all? However, my plan is to start wide and winnow to find an appropriate breadth of coverage.

Starting Texts

Thus far my research has been a reconnaissance, more browsing than structural study, to help me pick some starting research references. So, these are my selections for initial study at least in terms of published books. Disclosure – I’ve not yet read these, rather they are what I plan to start reading:

• Psychology / G. Neil Martin, Neil R. Carlson, William Buskist.
• Cognitive psychology : a student’s handbook / Michael W. Eysenck, Mark T. Keane.
• Literary theory : a very short introduction / Jonathan Culler
• Literary theory : an introduction / Terry Eagleton

Footnotes:

• [1] Nelson, Theodor (1987), Computer Lib/Dream Machines (Rev. ed.), Redmond, WA: Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-914845-49-7

Areas: Web-Open Source-Economics, Web-Open Data-Political Science

 The Web is a global community in which more disciplines are open to collaborate and incorporate their knowledge. We are living in a world that the tendency to openness is gaining territory. A clear-cut example is the open source and open data trends. I am interested in doing research how these tendencies are developing the web, and how will be their behavior in the next years. Furthermore, I want to know how opening tendencies are related to social areas such as: Economy and Politics, and how these areas are being affected by this trend.

 Justification:

Open source operative systems have become increasingly important specially in smart phones and Servers.

This evidence shows that firms and governments such as: Google, Novell, IBM, Panasonic, Virgin America, CISCO, Amazon, Peugeot, Wikipedia, US department of Defense, US Navy Submarine Fleet, The City of Munich, Germany, Spain, Federal Aviation Administration, French Parliament, State-Owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Pakistani School and Collages, Cuba, Macedonia Ministry of Education and Science, U.S. Postal Service, U.S. Federal Courts, Government of Mexico City rely on open source systems to Systematize administrative, operational, and financial processes within the firm, by collecting information that improves rational decision making inside the firm which in turn affects the competitiveness and current profitability as well as future profitability.

For instance, an open source system could be a relatively low cost tool for the firm to collect and systematize data that allows the firm to make better decisions to allocate resources (by facilitating the comparison of suppliers in terms of price and quality), to reduce administrative costs, to improve the process of strategic planning, to improve the market penetration of the firm’s products (by gathering relevant information of the preferences of costumers over the firm’s products). Hence, open source systems are critical for the firm to be competitive and profitable.

Open Data means Better Governments

International institutions such as the World Bank have emphasized the role of governance. Better governance means that the government is willing and capable to better represent the preferences of a majority of individuals in public policies. This means that better governance is related with the willingness and ability of the government to satisfy the needs of a majority (instead of a minority) of their citizen.

Open data is related with the ability of citizen to request information about the activities of the government (such as salaries of public officials, the mechanism for the allocation of public funds to different public programs, access to information about how the government select individuals who benefit from public programs, and so on). Moreover,, open data increases the transparency of the government and accountability which induces the government to better respond to the demands of voters . In other words, open data improves governance.

As a linguist, the way in which material can be shared internationally between various linguistic groups is something I find fascinating. To take a particular example, let’s use ‘Gangnam Style’ – A song with Korean lyrics. Korean is, at the risk of sounding harsh, not the most widely spoken of languages. Consider that of its 75 million native speakers (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Language), many live in North Korea and would have had no access to the song. On a more linguistic level, Korean belongs to the Altaic language family and is, according to what can be described as a ‘best linguistic guess’, most closely related to Japanese. But I can assure you now that not only do the speakers of the two languages have some long running disputes, but they also don’t understand each other at all. As a speaker of Japanese, I can assure anyone reading this that the languages are not even slightly similar.

So not that many people world-wide would understand the song. And yet its Youtube video has 1,788,916,808 views. (youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0). In the time it took me to type that out, it has probably grown again. And according to Laura Edwards, that’s for one simple reason – Social media sharing, or as she puts it people wanting “their friends, family and distant acquaintances to…share in the enjoyment of” the video. (socialmediatoday.com/laurahelen/980476/how-did-gangnam-style-go-viral)

There are thousands upon thousands of other examples – Youtube videos like ‘Will it Blend?’, memes, songs, adverts…But why DO things go viral? And how do they spread?

With these questions in mind, I’ve chosen the following disciplines: Complexity Science and Psychology. And the reasons for that are simple: Complexity Science deals with complex systems – understanding that system by modelling it and seeking to understand how it works. And is there any system more complicated than a social network? Someone’s sharing something with one group while possibly hiding it from another group – Nobody wants their grandma to see how drunk they were last night.

Psychology, on the other hand, seeks to understand the individual. And the individual users are just as important, in this case. Consider a user X. He sees the Gangnam Style video and does not think it’s funny – He doesn’t share it. Consider a different user, Y – He hears the Gangnam Style song and has an obsession with K-Rap, so he finds the video and shares it everywhere without even seeing it. Understanding these ideosyncrasies is the forte of Psychology, making it ideal for this purpose.

To start with, I’ve already read the Wikipedia entries for Complexity Science (Which redirects to Complex Systems) and Pyschology, spoken to friends studying for postgraduate qualifications in both fields and read “Psychology – A Very Short Introduction” (Butler, G & McManus, F; 1998; Oxford University Press), as well as various Internet articles which seek to define the two disciplines. This was predominantly to confirm my choices than to seek to define them.

As far as further study goes, I’m hoping that the friends I’ve spoken to will provide me with a list of useful materials soon, but in the meantime  I’m going to start on Pyschology as it’s more familiar – Linguistics shares some similar concepts. So particularly useful sources that I’ve found so far are “The Analysis of Mind,” by Bertrand Russell, available online from the library, a book called “Approaching Multivariate Analysis: An Introduction for psychology,” which I’m hoping might help me begin to understand how Psychology seeks to ‘solve’ problems and “Atkinson & Hilgard’s introduction to psychology,” all of which are seemingly relevant books I’ve found on Webcat.

With regard to Complexity Science, I’ve come up with the following sources: Chaos Under Control (Peak, David) which seems to give a basic overview of how Complexity Science seeks to cope with ‘chaos’, which seems useful for a social network; Morowitz’s “The Emergence of Everything – How the World Became Complex,” which is an electronic resource which doesn’t seem 100% helpful but I’m reading anyway to get in the ‘complexity mindset’; the Journal of Systems Science and Complexity, which I’m reading just to look at how complexity science is applied and how it ‘solves’ problems.

In addition, I’ve got a lot of Google search result links. I’m working my way through them, but they mostly concern introductions to the relevant disciplines and subfields, such as ‘Internet Psychology’, which seems particularly useful – Who knows: Maybe psychology will turn out to be too broad and I’ll go for that one?

So that’s all for now. Back to reading, I guess