Algorithmic Self-Governance for Socio-Technical Systems

Algorithmic Self-Governancefor Socio-Technical Systems

Jeremy PittDepartment of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Imperial College London

FoCAS Summer SchoolHeraklion, Crete, 23-27/06/2014

Background and Context

The Digital Society

Characterised by an ‘ecosystem’ of socio-technical applications

Some are solving collective action problems

Distribution of physical resources, such as energy, water, etc.Management of a shared physical space, e.g. office, house,park, etc.Participatory sensing applications, e.g. traffic, congestion, etc.

A collective action problem, in general:

Involves a group of people working together in some commonspace, butIndividuals may have a self-interest which conflicts with thegroup interestThe costs of an action may fall on an individual, but thebenefits accrue to the group

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What’s bugging me?

The Mckinsey-isation of public and professional life

“Everything can be measured; and anything that can bemeasured can be managed.”RateYourLecturer.co.uk (don’t even get me started)The top-end UK education system produces every year peoplewho are zealously devoted to the abstract institution andutterly lacking in empathy with its human members

The commodification of social relationships and concepts

Friends are not people you can count on, just people you cancount (and sell on, e.g. sale of Facebook, Twitter accounts)Loyalty means: “stay with me long enough until I candata-mine the sh*t out of you and flog you stuff”Privacy: infiltration of legitimate protest groups, surveillance

The nudge mentality

Evidence-based policy-making is only for the reality-basedcommunity“die Wahl eines anderen Volkes zu empfehlen” (Brecht)


Social Capital – A definition

From Ostrom and Ahn (2003) Social Capital . . .

. . . is an attribute of individuals that enhances their ability tosolve collective action problems

. . . has multiple forms: trustworthiness,networks/relationships, institutional context

Trust is the link between (forms of) social capital andcollective action

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Social Capital: Why It Is Important

‘Social Acetate’

The corollary of processes such as the McKinseyisation –,commodification –, nudge, etc. is to undermine trust.

This diminishes, to the point of obsolescence, all forms of socialcapital.

The obsolescence of social capital diminishes the prospect ofsuccessful collective action.

Without prospects and strategies for collective action we cannotproperly address local issues, like common-pool resourcemanagement, or global issues, like climate change.

We need to use ICT to fundamentally re-think – re-invent –re-discover – forms of social capital as a precursor to restoring(and going beyond) trust and empowering collective action.


FoCAS Case Study

Aims and Objectives

We propose to apply the fundamental principals, methods andtechnologies of collective adaptive systems to restore trust in thenext generation of social networking/collective action applications

Aims

A thought experiment in the envisionment,design/specification and implementation (path) of asocio-technical system to support collective action

Objectives

Understand how formal models of social processes can informthe design of socio-technical systems, and the ecosystem ofsocio-technical systems, e.g. for Smarter Cities


Governing the Commons

Introspection: How do people do it?

People are very good at “making stuff up”

In particular, making up and writing down rules toregulate/organise their own behaviour

Elinor Ostrom (Novel Laureate for Economic Science, 2009)

Common-pool resource (CPR) management by self-governinginstitutionsAlternative to privatisation or centralisation

Role-based protocols for implementing conventionalprocedures

Deliberative assemblies (Robert’s Rules of Order (RONR))

Self-organisation: change the rules according to other(‘fixed’, ‘pre-defined’) sets of rules

Self-determination: those affected by the rules participate intheir selection


Institutions

Definition of an Institution

“set of working rules that are used to determine who is eligibleto make decisions in some arena, what actions are allowed orconstrained, ... [and] contain prescriptions that forbid, permitor require some action or outcome” [Ostrom]

Implicitly includes RONR

Conventionally agreed, mutually understood, monitored andenforced, mutable and nested

Nesting: tripartite analysis

operational-, collective- and constitutional-choice rules

Decision arenas [Action Situations]

Requires representation of Institutionalised Power

Extensive fieldwork to identify common features of ‘successstories’


Sustainability of the Commons

Principles of enduring institutions: from ‘analysis’ to ‘supply’

Codify common features as institutional design principles

P1 Clearly defined boundariesP2 Congruence between rules and prevailing local environmentP3 Collective choice arrangementsP4 Monitoring by appointed agenciesP5 Flexible scale of graduated sanctionsP6 Access to fast, cheap conflict resolution mechanismsP7 No intervention by external authorities

P8 Systems of systems

Formal models of social processes

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Demand-Side Self-Organisation

Meet-the-Meter: a Serious Game environment for SmartGrids

Visualisation of Ostrom’s Institutional Design PrinciplesUse the SmartMeter for inclusivity, engagement andempowermentDelegation and aggregation of attention for ‘collectiveawareness’


Affective Conditioning

MACS: Affective Conditioning for open plan offices

Self-organised norms for ‘acceptable’ behaviourInstrumentation for detecting/verifying non-compliantbehaviour and adverse reactionApologies and forgiveness for self-regulation


Knowledge Commons

Interoceptive Collective Awareness

Social network for synchronisation, coordination andself-organisation

‘Big Data’ as a knowledge commons (pooled resource)

Participatory sensing applications with an equitable/reciprocalexchange of data for service

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Case Study: The Briefing

Envision and design a socio-technical system to solve a collectiveaction problem

Shared Space as a Common-pool resource

Four perspectives:

Interface, interaction and affordance design

Data and dataflow design

Protocol (implementation of institutional design principles)design

Architectural design


Summary and Conclusions

Outlined a Case Study in algorithmic self-governance forsocio-technical systems

Requires principles of collective adaptive systems to solve acollective action problem

As well as gaining first-hand experience in designing a new type ofcollective adaptive socio-technical system, participants will broadentheir understanding of social networking, event recognition,self-organisation, collective intelligence and complex systems, allfrom an inter-disciplinary perspective.


Technology

Algorithmic Self-Governance for Socio-Technical Systems