The Social Influence Model of Technology Adoption

Human innovation, in combination with the internet, networking, and communications technologies have produced a new platform for social and business networking, formation of community, and communication. This emerging phenomenon is generally known as social computing. While there is no widely accepted definition of social computing, we define it as: intra -group social and business actions practiced through group consensus, group cooperation, and group authority, where such actions are made possible through the mediation of information technologies, and where group interaction causes members to conform and influences others to join the group

Consensus Software: Robustness and Social Good

In this column I explore some far-reaching issues of software development that lie at the intersection of robust software and sociopolitical systems. These two areas might seem unrelated-and most software developers would likely be horrified to have politics intrude on their programming efforts-but the intersection occurs through these premises: software systems administer and control much of our societal infrastructure; people would appreciate and better accept that control if they had input into the nature of the control and the systems\u27 behavior; designers can make software systems more robust through redundancy, in which different versions of software components might cover for each other\u27s mistakes and limitations; and if many people could contribute software to societal control systems, the systems might be more robust and better represent people\u27s interests. The need for redundancy and the need for widespread participation can be mutually satisfying

Tribal Governance: The Business of Blockchain Authentication

The blockchain technology offers a novel mode of distributed authentication, which does not depend on a central authority. We consider this novelty against established governance modes. We illustrate our argument by paying special attention to blockchain-based authentication functions in the empirical domain of land registries across the world. Based on interviews with representatives from organizations deploying blockchain, and con-tent analysis of related grey literature, we discuss established governance idealtypes against what the rivalry that cryptocurrencies and blockchains bring to digital settings. After referring to market, hierarchy, network, and bazaar, we conclude outlining the prospects of a different, blockchain-related governance mode called -˜tribal’ that better captures the -˜togetherness’ which rivalry originates

Is altruism dead? A critical case study on the paradigm shift in open government data

The broad and continued success of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) has helped to spread its ideology to many other domains, including Open Government Data (OGD), which has recently gained prominence due to its potential for feeding algorithms. Despite the anti-market and anti-corporation values around free sharing, citizen participation, and unrestricted transparency propagated in particular by a highly idealized academic discourse on OGD, our case study of the development of Switzerland’s national OGD portal suggests that the altruistic and philanthropic notion that is often associated with OGD needs to be reconsidered. We show that low use, on one side, and the practical necessity towards cost-recovery behaviors, on the other side, have led to a compromise of the altruistic ideological beginnings of OGD and paved the way for a pragmatic shift towards a more utilitarian, partly even protectionist, view on liberating and sharing data

Top-K link recommendation for development of P2P social networks

Ankara : The Department of Computer Engineering and the Graduate School of Engineering and Science of Bilkent University, 2014.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2014.Includes bibliographical references leaves 45-48.The common approach for implementing social networks has been using centralized infrastructures, which inherently include problems of privacy, censorship, scalability, and fault-tolerance. Although decentralized systems offer a natural solution, significant research is needed to build an end-to-end peer-to-peer social network where data is stored among trusted users. The centralized algorithms need to be revisited for a P2P setting, where the nodes have connectivity to only neighbors, have no information of global topology, and may go offline and churn resulting in changes of the graph structure. The social graph algorithms should be designed as robust to node failures and network changes. We model P2P social networks as uncertain graphs where each node can go offline, and we introduce link recommendation algorithms that support the development of decentralized social networks. We propose methods to recommend top-k links to improve the underlying topology and efficiency of the overlay network, while preserving the locality of the social structure. Our approach aims to optimize the probabilistic reachability, improve the robustness of the local network and avoid loss from failures of the peers. We model the problem through discrete optimization and assign a score to each node to capture both the topological connectivity and the social centrality of the corresponding node. We evaluate the proposed methods with respect to performance and quality measures developed for P2P social networks.Aytaş, YusufM.S

The technology of casually connected collaboration

Since the early eighties researchers have been studying the use of technology that supports collaboration amongst co-workers and group members. This field of computer science became known as Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). With the advent of wireless and mobile Internet communication technologies research in the CSCW field has been focused on providing “access, anytime and anywhere”. The main contribution of this study is to introduce and analyze the technology required to support casually connected collaboration. Firstly, we define casually connected collaboration as having “access, anytime and anywhere” to collaborators and resources without having explicit control or knowledge over the environment and its technical abilities. In order to distinguish between connected, mobile, and casually connected collaboration we introduce a conceptual model of collaboration that extrapolates the term “access, anytime and anywhere”. We then aim to prove the soundness of our model by using it to classify some well known collaboration scenarios. Furthermore, by evaluating the functional and non-functional requirements for a casually connected collaboration solution, we argue that current commercial and CSCW research implementations do not sufficiently meet these demands. We then present Nomad: a Peer-to-Peer framework specifically designed to overcome the challenges encountered in casually connected collaboration. We study the technology requirements and highlight the implementation details that enabled us to successfully conform to the requirements set by casually connected collaboration. Finally, we pave the road for future work by investigating new features introduced into the Microsoft .NET Framework version 4.0, Visual Studio 2010 and language enhancements made to C# version 4.0.Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2009.Computer Scienceunrestricte

The Authority of Distributed Consensus Systems Trust, Governance, and Normative Perspectives on Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers

The subjects of this dissertation are distributed consensus systems (DCS). These systems gained prominence with the implementation of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. This work aims at understanding the drivers and motives behind the adoption of this class of technologies, and to – consequently – evaluate the social and normative implications of blockchains and distributed ledgers. To do so, a phenomenological account of the field of distributed consensus systems is offered, then the core claims for the adoption of systems are taken into consideration. Accordingly, the relevance of these technologies on trust and governance is examined. It will be argued that the effects on these two elements do not justify the adoption of distributed consensus systems satisfactorily. Against this backdrop, it will be held that blockchains and similar technologies are being adopted because they are regarded as having a valid claim to authority as specified by Max Weber, i.e., herrschaft. Consequently, it will be discussed whether current implementations fall – and to what extent – within the legitimate types of traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal authority. The conclusion is that the conceptualization developed by Weber does not capture the core ideas that appear to establish the belief in the legitimacy of distributed consensus systems. Therefore, this dissertation describes the herrschaft of systems such as blockchains by conceptualizing a computational extension of the pure type of rational-legal authority, qualified as algorithmic authority. The foundational elements of algorithmic authority are then discussed. Particular attention is focused on the idea of normativity cultivated in systems of algorithmic rules as well as the concept of decentralization. Practical suggestions conclude the following dissertation