This paper argues that the advent of the WWW and the principles now developing for the move ‘social machines’ has posed serious challenges to traditional social theory. In particular, it is argued that the concept of social machines and the forms of distributed agency they imply amplify ‘deep flaws’ in the underlying principles of current agency theories that make empirical work using such frameworks ‘undecidable’. The occasioning of social machines and the WWW here are examined for the ways in which the traditional models of agency, involving reflexivity/skill dynamics, can be dismantled and new principles for re-designed agency theory posed. One key problem and three re-design principles are identified

Vass, J.

English

Southampton (e-Prints Soton)

Webscience, ‘social machines’ and principles for re-designing theories of agency: a prolegomenon Jeff Vass Sociology and Social Policy University of Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK +44 2380 507455 jmv@soton.ac.uk     ABSTRACT This paper argues that the advent of the WWW and the principles now developing for the move ‘social machines’ has posed serious challenges to traditional social theory.  In particular, it is argued that the concept of social machines and the forms of distributed agency  they  imply  amplify  ‘deep  flaws’  in  the  underlying principles  of  current  agency  theories  that  make  empirical  work using such frameworks ‘undecidable’.  The occasioning of social machines and the WWW here are examined for the ways in which the  traditional  models  of  agency,  involving  reflexivity/skill dynamics, can be dismantled and new principles for re-designed agency  theory  posed.    One  key  problem  and  three  re-design principles are identified. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.3 [Group and Organizational Models]: Theory and Models; Sociology, Social Theory, Problems of Agency General Terms Human Factors, Theory Keywords  Agency,  social  theory,  social  machines, distributed agency 1.  INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND The evolution of the Internet has led to an urgent need for a step change  in  our  understanding  of  human  practices  and  their engagement with and through the World Wide Web (WWW). The key word here is ‘engagement’.  Until the advent of the WWW social theory has had a tendency to view the relationship between technology and social life either in broadly structural or agential terms.    The  tendency  of  structural  approaches  is  to  develop models  of  causative  or  correlative  effects  arising  from  the interplay  between  organizations  of  human  actors  and  their technologies.  The tendency of agential approaches is to consign productive  practices  analytically  to  human  actors  and  object-passivity  to  machines.    These  tendencies  are  inherent  in  the ‘DNA’ of social theory itself. It is such a powerful inherence that most  theoretical  frameworks,  and  empirical  studies  based  on them,  generally  produce  an  account  that  hovers  at  some  point along a continuum between social determinism and technological determinism.   According to Rose et al (2005) very influential frameworks that have tried to eschew social theoretical divisions between structure and  agency,  such  as  Giddens’  (1984)  Structuration  theory  and Latour’s  (2005)  actor  network  theory  (ANT),  have  failed  to convince, especially in empirical investigations, that analysis can move beyond a social-technological determinist continuum.  This is the case despite ANT aiming specifically for a ‘flat’ theory where the object of investigation is a distributed ‘assemblage’ of objects  and  actants.    Agency  is  properly  ascribed  to  the assemblage, rather than divisible human actors within it. This is an attractive framework for Webscience given a notional view of it.    Giddens  also  had  attempted  to  dissolve  structure  into  an account  of  practices  as  undertaken  by  human  actors  whose relationship  to  technology  is  as  to  types  of  action-dependent ‘resources’.  Technologies here can include machines as well as the  technology  of  writing  (see  Giddens,  1981).    Human engagement with these ‘technologies–as-resources’ is viewed in structuration  theory  as  a  kind  of  Piagetian  (Piaget,  1970) accommodation-assimilation process.  From Piaget’s theories of child development Giddens (1984) speculated that the manner in which human practices both shape and are shaped by the non-human  material  that  surrounds  it,  provided  an  archetype  for practice conceived as a duality of structure.  The latter is Giddens’ version  of  social  theoretical  ‘flatness’.  The  duality  of  structure hypothesis  enables  us  to  create  a  framework  for  understanding human-technology  engagement  as  a  process  of  the  mutual elaboration  and  structuring  of  human  actors  and  their technological environment.  At first sight this too is attractive as a social theoretical account for Webscience as it might provide a sophisticated  response  to  the  challenges  posed  by  Hendler  and Berners-Lee  (2009)  in  their  vision of WWW-based ‘interacting social machines’.  In this vision the development of the WWW is posed as a challenge to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community as we move from the Semantic Web to the more human-machine ‘interweaved’  arrangement  of  Social  Machines.    Developing ‘social machines’ along the AI model has clear parallels with the structuration theory framework.  The shaping and re-shaping of social  machines  through  AI  methodologies,  we  are  tempted  to think,  is  precisely  parallel  to  Piaget’s  (accommodation-assimilation) vision of human transformational capacity combined with  human  transformability  in  the  context  of  external  objects. Objects are re-patterned by the practices that operate on them; in the AI context the pattern is specifically an interactive program. We can also find changes in human actors who adapt to changing external patterns and arrangements of objects. Exactly the same  Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not  made  or  distributed  for  profit  or  commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise,  or  republish,  to  post  on  servers  or  to  redistribute  to  lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Conference’10, Month 1–2, 2010, City, State, Country. Copyright 2010 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0010 …$15.00.  principles  apply  to  machine  behaviours,  and  we  have  seen machines learning to act in real-time through the use of dynamic programming (e.g. Barto et al, 1995).  What is troubling about developing  theory  in  this  way  is  that  there  is  nothing  in  such frameworks  that:  (i)  enables  us  to  distinguish  AI  or  WWW  as objects from any other type of object or technology; (ii) we are required  to  develop  accounts  of  human-intelligent  systems’ processes based on categories of agency developed in relation to pre-intelligent  systems;  and,  (iii)  we  leave  ourselves  without  a social  theoretical  register  for  understanding  how  fundamentally new systems correlate with social change. The contention here is that while social theories, for sociological purposes,  are  routinely  heavily  challenged  by  the  empirical contexts  to  which  they  are  applied,  the  application  of  social theories  to  the  WWW  show  up  deeper  flaws.    That  is  to  say, sociological research challenges aspects of theory, but with the advent  of  the  WWW we are seeing problems in its  underlying principles.  The  WWW,  because  it  amplifies  profound  gaps  in theory requires us to radically re-think the fundamentals of theory, particularly those connected with the concept of agency.  The task of this paper is to briefly posit the nature of the issues and identify one fundamental principle of social theory that requires redesign in  the  light  of  WWW  developments.    The  following  section elaborates further on the character of the problem. 2.  SOCIAL MACHINES’ CHALLENGE TO SOCIAL THEORY 2.1  The Problem of Undecidability Computer  scientists  and  mathematicians  working  on  Turing’s problems  are  long  familiar  with  the  problem  of  undecidability, where it is not possible to construct a single algorithm, given a defined complexity, to admit of a yes/no solution.  In social theory a similar problem now arises.  The kinds of analytical complexity given us by the social-WWW nexus seem to be of a qualitatively different  kind  of  ‘order’  than  previous  social-technology complexes  (cf.  Gane,  2004).    Attempts  to  make  comparisons between  pre-  and  post-new  technologies  using  current  social theories  leave  interpretations  of  data  undecided  (Vass,  2008; 2012) as to the impact of technology on social issues.  This has less  to  do  with  problems  connected  with  how  social  theories provide  analytical  frameworks  mappable  to  methodological categories  than  it  has to  do  with  the fundamental definition of agency and how we define the ‘unit of action’ in social theory.  This has been a long term issue is sociology since Parsons (1949) attempted to solve the problem of definition of ‘the act’ in his seminal work The Structure of Social Action.  Recent adaptations of  his  ideas  for  life  in  the  twenty-first  century  (e.g.  Fox  et  al, 2005) hardly mention the impact of new technologies because the latter  is  not  seen  as  challenging  the  fundamental  premises  of definition.  In recent sociological work such as that of Urry (2000, 2007),  attempts  are  made  to  construct  Web  and  technology friendly  concepts  of  information  and  activity  ‘flows’.    Such concepts appear to offer the basis of a social theoretical narrative that  can  accommodate the  necessarily  ‘distributed’  character  of agency  under  conditions  given  us  by  the  WWW  (cf.  Malsch, 2001, Vass, 2012). The concept of ‘flow’ is rooted in Parsons’ original schema and is called ‘flow’ by way of marking how far social  change  has  impacted  on  the  contexts  of  human  activity since  ‘more  stable’  periods  in  modernity.    In  other  words,  the concept  of  flow  and  how  human  activities,  resources, communication systems, forms of mobility etc. can be described by it refer to the same definitions of action established by Parsons.  If this were not the case it would be very difficult to define exactly ‘what’  flows’.    Ironically,  recent  Parsonian  critical  work  (e.g. Bortolini,  2007)  argues  that  when  Parsons  first  conceived  of definitions of agency and ‘the act’ as a unit of analysis he was already  thinking  of  action  as a kind of flow to which the new category could be applied. The consequence of all this for theories that adopt Urry’s line is that when examining any human-social-technical complex it is not possible to analytically demonstrate the impact of a technology as implying any kind of qualitative social change.  Similarly, there is no way of being able to distinguish qualitatively between any type of technology or object that comes into the purview of the human agent be it a hammer, a crossbow, a hair-dryer or an AI-driven aircraft flight control system.  Urry’s analyses of the impact of new technologies and the way in which agency is said to be modified within the ‘new’ complexes they form, I suggest, are entirely ‘undecidable’. Clearly, being able to make distinctions between such objects and their role in broader complexes  is  key  to  responding  to  the  Webscience  agenda  of Social Machines such as understanding: ‘what forces govern the birth, evolution and demise of social machines?’ and ‘ Can the operation, function and output of social machines be described or identified in terms of a finite set of  “social primitives” comprised of both computational and social functions?’ (WWW2013).   2.2  The Source of the Problem The theoretical challenges posed by the advent of social machines as stated above impact centrally on social theories of agency just as the challenge to AI posed by Hendler and Berners-Lee (2009) targets  the  forms  that  social-machine  interactions  that  can  be imagined and developed.  The problem of such ‘inter-actions’ is that they are by origin types of distributed agency.  As Malsch (2001) and Rammert (2008) argue social theory must ask ‘where is the action?’ and conclude that we must develop understanding of  distributed  agency  to  answer  this.    The  WWW  and  social machines we can anticipate create a qualitative step change in the basis  of  agency  itself  since,  as  I  suggest,  systems  are  now produced  which  are  by  origin  distributed.    Potentially  this represents a paradigm shift in the development of the cybernetic imagination  which  should  inaugurate  a  new  framework  for understanding agency (cf. Webber and Vass, 2010).   The  old  framework  that  leads  to  undecidability  with  regard  to agency  and  change  is  predicated  on  the  manner  in  which  AI, cognitive science and social theory formalize an entirely notional analysis of action based on a polarity between, what are always taken  to  be,  two  kinds  of  sub-actions.    These  sub-actions  are characterized  slightly  differently  in  different  disciplines: cognition-automation  (Pask,  1961);  reflexivity-skill  (Giddens, 1984); schemata-habit repertoire (Bourdieu, 1990).  My own term for each of these polarities adapted for social theoretical purposes is Hermeneutic-Embodied (H-E).  In practice, our definition of the  act  as  a  unit  of  analysis,  our  understanding  of  the  ‘order’ produced by acts, and our means of investigating the perceived produced  order  of  events  has  been  dependent  always  on distinguishing  the  hermeneutic  (problem-solving,  thought-requiring) events from the automated, routinized or skilled aspects of events.  This polarity has survived through social theory since before  Parsons.    The  problem  is  its  deployment  cannot  tell  us anything  about  the  difference  between  distributed  and undistributed  agency.    If  we  take  the  example  of  a  distributed complex such as flying an Airbus to Tenerife (Rammert, 2008) we can identify and plot on a map the distribution of hermeneutical events  within  systems’  AI  programs,  human  actors  problem-solving  in  various  geographically  dispersed  locations,  together with  automated  elements  from  bureaucratic  procedures  in  air traffic  control  through  to  on  board  electronic  controls  of  fuel delivery to the aircraft’s engines.  However, there is nothing we can  say  in  our  description  of  the  ‘order’  and  ‘sequencing’ produced  by  this  that  allows  us  to  create  any  benchmarks  for distinguishing  this  order  from  one  created  by  ostensibly undistributed events.   This  limitation,  I  suggest  below,  is  derivable  entirely  from  the limitations inherent in the H-E model itself.     3.  PROLEGOMENON FOR THE RE-DESIGN OF SOCIAL THEORIES OF AGENCY From the identification of the problem in section 2 we may now proceed  to  identify  how  the  standard  principle  underlying  the relationship of agency to social orders may begin to be dismantled in the light of the manner in which the WWW forces us to re-imagine  agency.    The  following  three  points  provide  a prolegomenon to supersede the limitations identified above and provide revised principles of theory design for distributed agency. Firstly, within the H-E framework the definition of complexity is already defined by what are categorized as hermeneutic and what embodied  moments  of  interactions.    So  two  co-located  actors where one is giving the other verbal instructions in how to tie shoe-laces  is  a  non-complex  undistributed  event.    Whereas geographically separated musicians collaborating in real time and editing  music  online  via  the  WWW  suggests  complexity  and distributed agency.  Interestingly the situation of learning to tie shoe-laces is  practically  the more difficult task than organizing and performing a jam on the Web.  What H-E based models are not  capable  of  grasping  is  the  relation  between  H  and  E, reflexivity and skill etc..  It is always assumed in social theoretical models  that  H somehow  articulates E  and  produces order: that ideologies,  cognitive  events  structure  routine  while  the  latter provides material for cognition to adapt to.   Secondly,  when  engaged  with  different  kinds  of  empirical contexts we can identify qualitatively different kinds and levels of H and E than available in the Parsonian-inflected models social theory  habitually  uses.    For  example,  Kristeva  (1981)  has distinguished  between  levels  and  types  of  embodied/routinized  activity; and Billig (2005) identifies qualitatively different aspects of socially produced styles of cognition and reflexivity.  We must imagine that in a world of distributed-agentic events there is more to examine in terms of what exactly is distributed than simple H-E models allow. Thirdly, if we ‘split the H-E atom’ and identify more sub-atomic features of social-technological complexes than hitherto imagined we are in a better position to understand what kinds of strategies of  coherence  are  available  to  constitute  and  elaborate  the constellation of events and objects that make up any complex.  I suggest that an analysis of sub-H-E features of interaction would give  us  a  grasp  of  how  social  change  takes  place  through alterations to the more definable strategies of coherence that are applied to events by human and technological agents.   4.  REFERENCES [1]  Rose, J., Jones, M. and Truex, D. 2005. Socio-theoreticaccounts of IS: the problem of agency, Scand. J of Information Systems 17(1): 133-152  [2]  Giddens, A 1984. The Constitution of Society, Cambridge Polity [3]  Latour, B. 2005. 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An Approach to Cybernetics.

Analytical sociology and its discontents

Arguing and Thinking: a rhetorical approach to social psychology,

Crime, film and the cybernetic imagination.

Desire in Language: a semiotic approach,

Does the Internet ‘absorb’ human subjectivity and sociality? The limitations of two current dynamic process models WWW2012

From the Semantic Web to social machines: a research challenge for AI on the World Wide Web. Artificial Intelligence DOI= doi:

Learning to act using real-time dynamic programming.

Naming the unnameable: socionics or the sociological turn of/to distributed artificial intelligence Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

Reassembling the Social: an introduction to Actor-Network Theory,

Sociotheoreticaccounts of IS: the problem of agency,

Stability and wandering: self, coherence and embodiment at the end of the social,

The Constitution of Society,

The Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism,

The Future of Social Theory,

The Logic of Practice,

Where the action is: distributed agency between humans, machines and programs.

Webscience, 'social machines' and principles for redesigning theories of agency: a prolegomenon

Webscience, 'social machines' and principles for redesigning theories of agency: a prolegomenon

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