Brian Whitworth | Massey University (original) (raw)

Books by Brian Whitworth

brianwhitworth.com , 2024

Chapter 7 (in progress) explores whether mysticism and science are complementary ways to study re... more Chapter 7 (in progress) explores whether mysticism and science are complementary ways to study reality, one based on the observer and the other based on the observed. Part 1 evaluates the premises of world scriptures based on quantum realism. It can be viewed online at https://brianwhitworth.com/chapter-7/

Social-technical systems are social systems operating on technological base, e.g. Wikipedia, Face... more Social-technical systems are social systems operating on technological base, e.g. Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube, and so subject to social and technical requirements. Physical society evolved ideas like freedom and privacy over thousands of years but online communities just spring up, built by designers still defining what “social” means. In online worlds, code is law, so system designers are essentially the lawmakers of an open, free system that began much as the Wild West did, except now social rules are enforced by access control code not guns. Berners-Lee argues that a bill of online rights is needed to protect the open neutrality of the World Wide Web [1], and this paper agrees, but adds that it must be written as an access control model.

Hundreds of millions of people use social technologies like Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube every... more Hundreds of millions of people use social technologies like Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube every day, but what makes them work? And what is the next step? The Social Design of Technical Systems explores the path from computing revolution to social evolution. Based on the assumption that it is essential to consider social as well as technological requirements, as we move to create the systems of the future, this book explores the ways in which technology fits, or fails to fit, into the social reality of the modern world. Important performance criteria for social systems, such as fairness, synergy, transparency, order and freedom, are clearly explained for the first time from within a comprehensive systems framework, making this book invaluable for anyone interested in socio-technical systems, especially those planning to build social software. This book reveals the social dilemmas that destroy communities, exposes the myth that computers are smart, analyses social errors like the credit meltdown, proposes online rights standards and suggests community-based business models. If you believe that our future depends on merging social virtue and technology power, you should read this book.

Papers by Brian Whitworth

This paper analyzes the nature of social performance, to explain how socio-technical systems (STS... more This paper analyzes the nature of social performance, to explain how socio-technical systems (STSs) like chat, e-markets, social networks and wikis can succeed despite being free of charge. It defines the non-zero-sum synergy gains of cooperation and how self-interested acts can collapse the society that creates them. How physical human society dealt with this "social dilemma " then relates to the socio-technical advance. In this model society is a social environment within a world environment, so its citizens face the dual requirements of self-interest and social-interest, which can be satisfied by anchoring one demand then managing the other, e.g. competing within a social context, as in markets, or community service within an individual context of sufficiency. The latter, it is proposed, is the new social form that socio-technical systems illustrate and which could be the future of humanity.

This article describes how social politeness is relevant to computer system design. As the Intern... more This article describes how social politeness is relevant to computer system design. As the Internet becomes more social, computers now mediate social interactions, act as social agents and serve as information assistants. To succeed in these roles computers must learn a new skill- politeness. Yet selfish software is currently a widespread problem, and politeness remains a software design “blind spot”. Using an informational definition of politeness, as the giving of social choice, suggests four aspects: 1. Respect, 2. Openness, 3. Helpfulness, and 4. Remembering. Examples are given to suggest how polite computing could make human-computer interactions more pleasant, and increase software usage. In contrast, if software rudeness makes the Internet an unpleasant place to be, usage may minimize. For the Internet to recognize its social potential, software must be not only useful and usable, but also polite.

Abstract—This paper compares two evaluation criterion frameworks for socio-technical software. Re... more Abstract—This paper compares two evaluation criterion frameworks for socio-technical software. Research on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) confirms that perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) are relevant criteria for users evaluating organizational software. However information technology has changed considerably since TAM’s 1989 inception, so an upgraded evaluation framework may apply. The Web of System Performance (WOSP) model suggests eight evaluation criteria, based on a systems theory definition of performance. This study compares WOSP and TAM criterion frameworks in a performance evaluation experiment using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. Subjects who used both TAM and WOSP criteria preferred the WOSP criteria, were more satisfied with its decision outcomes, and found the WOSP evaluation more accurate and complete. As socio-technical software becomes more complex, users may need (or prefer) more comprehensive evaluation criteria framewor...

Currently IS practice abounds with application innovations, e.g. online auctions, blogs, wikis, c... more Currently IS practice abounds with application innovations, e.g. online auctions, blogs, wikis, chat, user spaces, multi-player games and reputation ratings. In contrast IS academic theories seem to change little over time. To the practitioners who create application advances, journals often seem out-dated, over-rigorous and irrelevant. Yet, as IS practice has innovated more, IS journals are, if anything, becoming more risk averse. The trend may reflect a mistaken belief that more rigor is better science. However in science, errors of commission (lack of rigor) trade off against errors of omission (lack of relevance). Is rigor at the expense of relevance causing IS theory to fall behind IS practice? One solution is an open IS publishing electronic archive, following the successful Los Alamos physics archive. If the IS community adds quality control to that model, it could lead the way in electronic knowledge exchange systems.

Access control, as part of every software system, has evolved as computing has evolved. Its origi... more Access control, as part of every software system, has evolved as computing has evolved. Its original aim was to limit unauthorized access to centralized systems, but the rise of social networks like Facebook has changed that. Now each person wants to control who sees photos or makes comments on their local wall by making and unmaking friends, i.e. dynamic, distributed rights control. Social networks already have access control, but there is currently no agreed logical model for their rights, no consistent scheme for allocating and re-allocating permissions to create, edit, delete and view social objects and entities. A socio-technical approach based on social and technical requirements can give the basics of a model. Various rights reallocations like multiply, divide, transfer and delegate are explored. It suggests a theoretical base for access control beyond its security parent.

Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, 2019

The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society: Annual Review, 2010

The Social Design of Technical Systems Building Technologies For Communities 2nd Edition, 2014

The Social Design of Technical Systems Building Technologies For Communities, 2013

The Social Design of Technical Systems Building Technologies For Communities 2nd Edition, 2014

brianwhitworth.com , 2024

Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, 2019

The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society: Annual Review, 2010

The Social Design of Technical Systems Building Technologies For Communities 2nd Edition, 2014

The Social Design of Technical Systems Building Technologies For Communities, 2013

The Social Design of Technical Systems Building Technologies For Communities 2nd Edition, 2014

Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications

Spam, undesired and usually unsolicited e-mail, has been a growing problem for some time. A 2003 ... more Spam, undesired and usually unsolicited e-mail, has been a growing problem for some time. A 2003 Sunbelt Software poll found spam (or junk mail) has surpassed viruses as the number-one unwanted network intrusion (Townsend & Taphouse, 2003). Time magazine reports that for major e-mail providers, 40 to 70% of all incoming mail is deleted at the server (Taylor, 2003), and AOL reports that 80% of its inbound e-mail, 1.5 to 1.9 billion messages a day, is spam the company blocks. Spam is the e-mail consumer’s number-one complaint (Davidson, 2003). Despite Internet service provider (ISP) filtering, up to 30% of in-box messages are spam. While each of us may only take seconds (or minutes) to deal with such mail, over billions of cases the losses are significant. A Ferris Research report estimates spam 2003 costs for U.S. companies at $10 billion (Bekker, 2003). While improved filters send more spam to trash cans, ever more spam is sent, consuming an increasing proportion of network resource...

ACM SIGITE Newsletter, 2008

While over the last decade computing practitioners created new, innovative applications like onli... more While over the last decade computing practitioners created new, innovative applications like online auctions, blogs, wikis, chat, social networks and social book-marking, computing academia has innovated much less. The resulting theory/practice divide in computing can be attributed to the effect on academic creativity of the myth that rigor is excellence. The use of publishing to appoint positions, promote for tenure and allocate grants supports the current "gatekeeper" academic publishing model. This is not only based on print-publishing limits that no longer apply, but also incorrect as it ignores the 'Type II" error of rejecting useful knowledge. Modern social computing suggests how to reinvent the academic knowledge exchange system (KES) to innovate and disseminate as well as discriminate. Building upon existing successful knowledge repositories like the Los Alamos archive suggests an open electronic KES that not only increases dissemination (by publishing all...

Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Second Edition

The term sociotechnical was introduced by the Tavistock Institute in the 1950’s for manufacturing... more The term sociotechnical was introduced by the Tavistock Institute in the 1950’s for manufacturing cases where the needs of technology confronted those of local communities, for example, longwall mining in English coalmines (see http://www.strategosinc.com/socio-technical.htm). Social needs were opposed to the reductionism of Taylorism, which broke down jobs on say a car assembly line into most ef- ficient elements. Social and technical were seen as separate side-by-side systems which needed to interact positively, for example, a village near a nuclear plant is a social system (with social needs) besides a technical system (with technical needs). The sociotechnical view later developed into a call for ethical computer use by supporters like Mumford (Porra & Hirscheim, 2007). In the modern holistic view the sociotechnical system (STS) is the whole system, not one of two side-by-side systems. To illustrate the contrast, consider a simple case: A pilot plus a plane are two side-by-side ...

There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why ... more There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. " (Adams, 1995) 3.1. INTRODUCTION In the last chapter, light was the first physical thing, beyond the apparent " nothing " of space but not yet achieving the static " something " of matter. This chapter goes on to deduce the properties of light including its ability to be a wave and a particle, to detect to objects it doesn't physically touch, to take all paths to a destination, to choose a path after it arrives and to spin in two directions at once. This is only possible if a photon is a program, spreading on a grid network that is the: " … primary world-stuff " (Wilczek, 2008) p74. This grid is not what we see, but what outputs what we see, and time, space, mass, charge and en...

Spam and anti-spam techniques are part of email since its birth. Spam is electronic garbage with ... more Spam and anti-spam techniques are part of email since its birth. Spam is electronic garbage with no anticipating recipient and almost always deleted. In 2010, around 89% of all emails were spam, resulting in an estimated 260 billion spam emails sent every single day. Most of the current anti-spamming systems focus on incoming spam but these messages still travel the internet world and waste bandwidth, storage and processing resources. This research proposes a collaborative outgoing anti-spam technique to reduce the spread of spam on the internet. The technique targets outgoing emails and its use would free the internet from 260 billion spam a day. During real-time experiment, it blocked 99.95% of the total spam generated with 99.57% elimination at sender side.

Access control is the process by which authorized users are granted permission over resources. Ac... more Access control is the process by which authorized users are granted permission over resources. Access control models incorporate application requirements in their design and thus evolve with the applications. The rise of online social networks (OSN), like Facebook, has posed new requirements over the privacy of users' data due to the presence of heterogeneous privacy circle. The traditional models cannot be used for this new type of applications for the complexity of millions of users interacting with each other. Different access control models for OSN are proposed based on relationships, trust, rule semantics, or history between the user and the requestor, however, rights delegation, rights transfer, reputation management and transparency are still ignored by the research community. To address these concerns and challenges, further research is needed. This paper reviews these challenges and presents a number of future research directions for access control models in the context of OSN.

A community is a social entity that by norms, laws or ethics grants its citizens rights-social pe... more A community is a social entity that by norms, laws or ethics grants its citizens rights-social permissions to act. Online social networks are computer based communities whose social requirements are not too different from any other. Access control in these networks requires some logical foundation to build upon. Without an agreed logical basis to distribute social rights, current access control models are based on intuition, experience or trial and error. This paper identifies some ethical issues in online social networks and suggests their solutions by socio-technical approach – use the knowledge of physical society as the basis of information rights model for online communities. Social axioms provide a theoretical base for rights analysis that could not only satisfy technical but also social and ethical requirements.