Towards a "Mindful" Web
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Slides for my talk at Trinity College, Dublin, on what Web Science means to me. ABSTRACT It is common to view any artificially created entity as an extension of our human faculties. So it was with our early understanding of the World Wide Web. In the initial years, the Web was viewed variously as a very large database, a digital library or even as an extension of our thoughts. In this talk, I will argue that, far from the Web being an extension of ourselves, *we* are individual appendages to a large emergent characteristic space created by the Web. This is called the "Socio-Cognitive Space". Much like the "economy" -- an entity created by us, which in turn affects our financial well being, the socio-cognitive space that is created by us in turn influences what we think and even how we feel. The socio-cognitive space can satiate our scientific curiosity or strengthen our cognitive biases, stroke our inner-most desires or make us deeply outraged, create wise crowds or unruly mobs, and create a livelihood or drive people to suicide. The socio-cognitive space is immersive and specific in its influence. Two people from the same family could be affected very differently by the Web, depending on their own innate characteristics. We are only beginning to understand the impact of this very powerful space, which is only going to increase in the coming years. I will also argue that arguments that view the Web as a whole as a great opportunity or a great threat, are both inherently missing the essence of the socio-cognitive space. Instead, I will draw concepts from Eastern philosophy to view the space as a collective "state of being" characterized by different levels of harmony or disharmony.
Transcript of Towards a "Mindful" Web
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Towards a “Mindful” WebSrinath Srinivasa
Web Sciences Labhttp://cds.iiitb.ac.in/wsl/Center for Data Sciences
http://cds.iiitb.ac.in/IIIT Bangalore – Indiahttp://www.iiitb.ac.in/
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Recent additions to our vocabulary
● Social media● Tweeting● #hashtags● SEO● Wikipedia● Netbanking● MOOC● Crowdsourcing● Big Data
● Phishing● Trolling● SEO● Cyberstalking● Cyber squatting● Identity theft● Online privacy● Big Data
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
The World Wide WebWhat started as a means for managing documents, is now an integral part of the lives of more than 360 million users worldwide
Models of the Web
Very large database
Digital library
A cognitive extension of ourselves
Sociocognitive space
Image source: http://info.cern.ch/Proposal.html
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Web as a Database
Early approaches (mid '90s) to model the Web
Focused on the “semistructured” nature of the Web and as a special case of managing structured (RDBMS) databases
Research objectives: structured and rich query semantics
Examples include: [AMM 97], [Eng 98], WebQL
An example WebQL query
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebQL
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Web as a Digital Library
Shift from:
Strict notions of “query” Looser notions of “retrieval” and “relevance”
Strict notions of “schema” Looser notions of “ontology”
Emphasis still on retrieving information
Web still seen as a passive repository of information
Examples: [GR+ 97], [HMA 03]
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Web as a Cognitive Extension of Ourselves
Rooted in Vannevar Bush's interpretation of hypertext reflecting the way information is organized in human brains
Focus on interpreting hyperlinks, rather than (just) data on web pages
Hyperlink as a(n):– Relevance indicator– Endorsement– Attention pathway
Examples: PageRank [BP 98], HITS [GKR 98]
Memex
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Web as a Sociocognitive SpaceCharacteristic paradigm of Web 2.0 approaches
Web as an active, participatory, social space
Shift of emphasis from retrieving information from the Web to engaging users with the Web
Characteristic elements of the sociocognitive space paradigm:
Crowdsourcing
Participatory authoring (Ex: Wikis)
Social bookmarking
Recommendations
Pushbased notifications
Social media and information diffusion modeling
Personalized search
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
The Sociocognitive SpaceFrom web users to web participants
Active “behavior molding” from other participants and web elements (User feedback, likes, +1, 1; algorithmic ranking and recommendations)
“Ask not what the Web can do for you, ask what you can do for the Web”
“If any online social space provides services for free, then you are not the customer, you are the product!”
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
The Sociocognitive Space
Immersive and individualized experience
“Karmic” gratification
Social nature of mass media
Individualized nature of “social” media
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Survival in the “Space”
Three things to know:
Actor, agent and identity
Spread of ideas versus spread of emotions
Crowds, herds and mobs
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Actor and Agent
Two forms of identity:
Actor: Our externally projected set of characteristics
Agent: Our set of innate characteristics
Actor: Who we are in a social setting
Agent: Who we are when we are alone
“Moral” Actor and “Selfish” Agent [FSO 14]
Agnostic to cultural variations
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Actor and Agent Collectives
Predominantlyactor societies
Society made of people contributing their “actor” selves to the collective
Values collective good over individual freedom
Values manners and political correctness over direct honesty
Low collective dissonance, but high individual dissonance
Predominantlyagent societiesSociety made of people contributing their “agent” selves to the collective
Passionate and enthusiastic
Values honesty and transparency over political correctness
Lesser individual dissonance, but may witness more conflicts compared to predominantlyactor collectives
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Actor and Agent
The web is likely to be a predominantlyagent space
Even more so, when participation is anonymous!
Anonymity, invisibility and lack of eye contact brings out the “agent” and obviates need for the “actor” [NB 12]
Possible explanation for the “online disinhibition effect” [Suler 04]
Online social life likely to be more passionate and more conflictprone than offline social lives.
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Ideas and EmotionsSpread of ideas
Spreads by dynamics of (bounded) rationality
Facilitated by connectivity
Hampered by “too much” connectivity (conformance psychology)
Needs critical connectivity and rational motivation
Spread of emotions
Spreads by emotional contagion
Facilitated by connectivity
Unhampered by too much connectivity
No rational basis for spread
Triggered by any form of dissonance
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Entrenchment and the Diffusion of Ideas
Information diffusion is faster in sparsely connected parts of a network, rather than densely connected (entrenched) parts due to conformance effects.
Node d in the above figure does not switch to the new idea because of conformance pressures from nodes e, f and g
Image Source: [Sri 06]
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Mental Models, Weak Ties and the Emotional Contagion
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Mental Models, Weak Ties and the Emotional Contagion
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Mental Models, Weak Ties and the Emotional Contagion
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Mental Models, Weak Ties and the Emotional Contagion
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Mental Models, Weak Ties and the Emotional Contagion
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Mental Models, Weak Ties and the Emotional Contagion
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
The Web and the
Emotional Contagion
Spread of ideas hampered by entrenchment effects and conformance pressures
Spread of emotions facilitated in entrenched and tightlyknit networks
Interactions over the Web typically span across mental models
Interaction across mentalmodels increases dissonance and emotionally charged conversations
Emotions spread faster on the Web than ideas!
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
The Wisdom of Crowds..
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Crowdsourcing is all fine, but..
Not all groups of people form“wise” crowds!
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Crowds, Herds and MobsCrowds– A sharedattention group debating about a topic
– Rich in diversity of viewpoints and argumentation– Wisdom of the Crowd
Herds– A shared mentalmodel group, all possessing the same or similar beliefs
– Potent in strength of conviction of beliefs– Unwise as a collective and potentially manipulable – Herd Mentality
Mobs– A shared emotionalstate group, all possessing the same emotional state, but no shared
mental model or attention– Extremely unpredictable, unwise and potent as a collective– Mob fury
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Crowds, Herds and MobsCrowds:Members act as individualsHigh cognitive loadUnstable
Herds:Members comply to collectiveLow cognitive loadStable
Mobs:Deindividualized membersNo self-awareness as individualsExpansive
degeneration
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Perspectives towards the Web
The Web is an Opportunity
The Web is a Threat
The Web is.
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
The “Mindful” WebFrom:
Web as an object of interest
Problemsolving
Objectification (depersonalization)
Transactional and specific interventions
Imperative control actions (Do this, Do that..)
To:
Web as a collective state of being
Harmonizing
Selfawareness
Ongoing relationship with generic interventions
Declarative control actions (This needs to be achieved..)
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
The “Mindful” Web
WWW
Web-state modeling center(s)
Web observatory
Participatoryweb site
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Engineering a “Mindful” Web
One or more “State of the Web” modelbuilding centers
Powered by inputs from a distributed array of “Web Observatories”
Providing strategic, declarative, aggregatelevel inputs to participatory websites like social media sites
Managed in an open and transparent fashion by public endowments
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Towards a “Mindful” Web
Rich area of interdisciplinary research
Several open problems – including legal and ethical dilemmas
Ex: Is it advisable to dampen the spread of some news simply because it can induce an intense negative emotional reaction?
Web Science : Humanities :: Cognition : Being Human
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
Thank You!
All images used in this presentation have a CC public license or their licensing terms were unspecified. Copyright rests with the creators.
Icons source: http://findicons.com/ http://velyrhorde.livejournal.com/73019.html
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
References[AMM 97] G.O. Arocena, A.O. Meldelzon and G.A. Mihaila, Applications of a Web query language, in: Proc. of the 6th International World Wide Web Conference, April 7–11, 1997, Santa Clara, California, USA, http://www6.nttlabs.com/HyperNews/get/PAPER267.html
[GR+ 97] Gudivada, V.N.; Raghavan, V.V.; Grosky, William I; Kasanagottu, R., "Information retrieval on the World Wide Web," Internet Computing, IEEE , vol.1, no.5, pp.58,68, Sep/Oct 1997
[BP 98] Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page. 1998. The anatomy of a largescale hypertextual Web search engine. In Proceedings of the seventh international conference on World Wide Web 7 (WWW7), Philip H. Enslow, Jr. and Allen Ellis (Eds.). Elsevier Science Publishers B. V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, The Netherlands, 107117.
[Eng 98] Carlos F. Enguix. 1998. Database querying on the World Wide Web: UniGuide, an objectrelational search engine for Australian universities. Comput. Netw. ISDN Syst. 30, 17 (April 1998), 567572. DOI=10.1016/S01697552(98)000804 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S01697552(98)000804
[GKR 98] David Gibson, Jon Kleinberg, and Prabhakar Raghavan. 1998. Inferring Web communities from link topology. In Proceedings of the ninth ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermedia : links, objects, time and spacestructure in hypermedia systems: links, objects, time and spacestructure in hypermedia systems (HYPERTEXT '98). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 225234.
[HMA 03] Ian Horrocks, Deborah L. McGuinness, and Christopher A. Welty. 2003. Digital libraries and webbased information systems. In The description logic handbook, Franz Baader, Diego Calvanese, Deborah L. McGuinness, Daniele Nardi, and Peter F. PatelSchneider (Eds.). Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA 427449.
Talk at Trinity College, Dublin, July 2014
References[Suler 04] Suler, John. "The online disinhibition effect." Cyberpsychology & behavior 7.3 (2004): 321326.
[NB 12] LapidotLefler, Noam, and Azy Barak. "Effects of anonymity, invisibility, and lack of eyecontact on toxic online disinhibition." Computers in Human Behavior 28.2 (2012): 434443.
[FSO 14] Frimer, J. A., N. K. Schaefer, and H. Oakes. "Moral actor, selfish agent." Journal of personality and social psychology 106.5 (2014): 790802.
Google IR Research http://research.google.com/pubs/InformationRetrievalandtheWeb.html
When crowdsourcing goes wrong: Reddit, Boston and missing student Sunil Tripathi http://www.newstatesman.com/worldaffairs/2013/04/whencrowdsourcinggoeswrongredditbostonandmissingstudentsuniltripathi
The 5 Most Entertaining Crowdsourcing Disasters http://www.businessinsider.com/the5mostentertainingcrowdsourcingdisasters20099/ifail201?IR=T#ifail201
The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/thestorybehindtheworstmovieonimdb/
Web Observatory http://wstweb1.ecs.soton.ac.uk/webobservatory/
