The Social Machine: Designs for Living Online

Leonardo ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-177
Author(s):  
Will Luers
Keyword(s):  
The Social ◽  
Social Machine

Metaphors of Conquest: Towards the Aesthetics of Dalit Feminism through Select Texts and Contexts

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-83
Author(s):  
Jaydeep Sarangi
Keyword(s):  
Indian Society ◽  
Social Oppression ◽  
Disadvantaged Populations ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dalit Women ◽  
Caste Politics ◽  
Class Distinction ◽  
Social Machine

One of the aims of writing dalit literature in India has been to reveal to the readers the injustice, oppression, helplessness and struggles of many of the disadvantaged populations under the social machine of stratification in India. Caste politics in India is unique and culture specific. Dalit feminism is unique in Indian context. The stratified Indian society beguiles the dalit women to the whirlpool of social oppression and exploitation. It is against any sort of class distinction. Conceiving the ideology of Dr B. R. Ambedkar: ‘Educate, agitate, organize’ dalit women write back.

Measure, machine, money

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-272
Author(s):  
Frank Engster
Keyword(s):  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Physical Machine ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Social Machine

The aim of the text is to clarify why machines are economically productive only in capitalism and therefore in our society are capitalistic machines. They are capitalist not only because they increase the productive power of the capitalist valorisation, but this valorisation first of all is producing these machines, or at least it produces their productivity and hence ‘the machinic’ of machines. To understand this production of the machinic, we must understand them, as, for example, Heidegger, Simondon or Deleuze and Guattari have shown, from their context: from their non-technical essence, from their connection with other machines and from the social essence of the machinic. But in this context, first of all and in the last instance, we have to understand with Marx their entanglement with the capitalist valorisation. This can be shown for three different types of machines: the physical machine, the calculation machine and the social machine: money. What all three have in common and almost defines them as machines is that all three naturalise relations by quantifying them. The classical physical machine quantifies the relation of nature, the calculation machine quantifies information and meaning, and the money machine quantifies the relations of our society. I will concentrate on the physical and the money machine only. The technique to quantify is for both the same: measurement. This quantification and naturalisation by measurement is why both are – although or especially because they are opposed types of machines – interfaces to the capitalist valorisation process, and in this functioning as interfaces, we have to search their non-technical essence.

Machines and measure

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-144
Author(s):  
Phoebe V Moore ◽  
Kendra Briken ◽  
Frank Engster
Keyword(s):  
Shop Floor ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Event Description ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University ◽  
Business Philosophy ◽  
Automated Methods ◽  
Platform Economy ◽  
Social Machine

This Special Issue, entitled ‘Machines & Measure’, is largely the dissemination from a workshop held at University of Leicester School of Business, organised by editor Phoebe V Moore, for the Conference for Socialist Economists South Group in February 2018, which was hosted by the University of Leicester School of Business, Philosophy and Political Economy Centre. Not all the authors in the Special Issue were speakers at the event, but this collection provides a carefully selected, representative collection of articles and essays which address the questions and disturbances that drove the event’s concept, those being, as articulated in the event description: How are machines being used in contemporary capitalism to perpetuate control and to intensify power relations at work? Theorising how this occurs through discussions about the physical machine, the calculation machine and the social machine, the workshop was designed to re-visit questions about how quantification and measure both human and machinic become entangled in the social and how the incorporation and absorption of workers as appendages within the machine as Marx identified, where artificial intelligence and the platform economy dominate today’s discussions in digitalised work research.Stemming from Marxist critical theory, questions of money, time, space are also revisited in the Special Issues articles, as well as less debated concepts in rhythmanalysis and a revival of historically frequently discussed issues such as activities on the shop floor, where a whole range of semi-automated and fully automated methods to manage work through numeration without, necessarily, remuneration continue. Articles ask the most important questions today and begin to identify possible solutions from a self-consciously Marxist perspective.

scholarly journals Applying mechanical philosophy to web science: The case of social machines

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Smart ◽  
Kieron O’Hara ◽  
Wendy Hall
Keyword(s):  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Online Systems ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Precise Meaning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Web Science ◽  
Social Machines ◽  
Internet Science ◽  
Mechanistic View ◽  
Social Machine

AbstractSocial machines are a prominent focus of attention for those who work in the field of Web and Internet science. Although a number of online systems have been described as social machines (examples include the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Reddit, and Galaxy Zoo), there is, as yet, little consensus as to the precise meaning of the term “social machine.” This presents a problem for the scientific study of social machines, especially when it comes to the provision of a theoretical framework that directs, informs, and explicates the scientific and engineering activities of the social machine community. The present paper outlines an approach to understanding social machines that draws on recent work in the philosophy of science, especially work in so-called mechanical philosophy. This is what might be called a mechanistic view of social machines. According to this view, social machines are systems whose phenomena (i.e., events, states, and processes) are explained via an appeal to (online) socio-technical mechanisms. We show how this account is able to accommodate a number of existing attempts to define the social machine concept, thereby yielding an important opportunity for theoretical integration.

Social Challenges for the Social Machine

2016 ◽  
pp. 138-162
Author(s):  
James Hendler ◽  
Alice M. Mulvehill
Keyword(s):  
Social Challenges ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Machine
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document