TITLE

The Internet, Science, and Transformations of Knowledge

Ralph Schroeder & Eric T. Meyer

Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

2012

@etmeyer

The OeSS Project 2005-2012

Oxford e-Social Science Project

Oxford

Internet

Institute

Oxford

e-Research

Centre

Institute for

Science, Innovation

and Society

at

Saïd Business School

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/microsites/oess/

research using

digital tools and data

for the distributed and collaborative

production of knowledge

Research computing

The Grid

Supercomputing

Clouds

Big Data

Web 2.0

Digital transformations of research

Computational Manipulability +

Research Technologies (Mathematization)

Socio-Technical Organization

(Computerization movements)

Transformations of Research Front

(For different fields)

Computational Manipulability?

• ‘the distinctiveness of the network of mathematical practitioners is that they focus their attention on the pure, contentless form of human communicative operations: on the gestures of marking items as equivalent and of ordering them in series, and on the higher-order operations which reflexively investigate the combinations of such operations’

• ‘mathematical rapid-discovery science…the lineage of techniques for manipulating formal symbols representing classes of communicative operations’

Research Technologies and Driving Forces

• Off-the-shelf and special purpose, but ‘all-purpose’ (passport-like) machines across contexts

• A hard core around which researchers can focus attention on a common research front

• Movements (SIMs, Frickel and Gross) to computerize (mathematize?) research (Kling)

• Core (research technologies) plus organization and movements - driving science (and research)

The sociology of advancing (online) knowledge production

• Research instruments plus mathematics -> high-consensus rapid-discovery science

• Orientation to a community of researchers at the research front

• Focus of attention limited by law of small numbers (Collins)

• The extension of computation into research • The limits of understanding and explaining

research-in-the-making… …versus a movement that applies across research

Varieties of Research

• Humanities: patterns in words, numbers, images, sounds…

• Social Sciences: statistics, image analysis, mapping…

• Sciences: Hacking’s ‘styles’

• Mathematization, now Cloudified

• All knowledge is digitally manipublable in e-Research…

• …but relation of the object to the (physical) world or to the research front varies

I get pretty much everything I need by way of primary sources now from the web. For primary sources, I’ve now got more material than I will need probably for the rest of my lifetime.

“

My greatest frustration in life is that we can now answer all the questions we had in 1980 faster, much, much faster. And we can get around to publishing them much, much more quickly. But what we haven’t yet done is develop the new questions and the new paradigms that should be possible, and that we as imaginative scholars should be able to imagine.

“ Asking new questions?

Source: CERN, CERN-EX-0712023, http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1203203

Particle Physics and EGEE: The world’s largest e-Science collaboration

Citizen e-Science: Distribute computation

Citizen e-Science: Distribute brainpower

NASA Clickworkers (ca. 2000)

GAIN:

Genetic Association

Information Network

Years Type of study Samples DNA Sequencing Scope of collaboration

1985-1997 Family association / linkage

300 Hundreds of loci / candidate genes

4 sites in USA

1997-2007 Family association / linkage

1,500 10,000 SNPs 13 sites in USA

2007-2009 Genome-wide association

5,000 1,200,000 SNPs Multiple multi-institution

collaborations in USA

2010-? Whole genome 30,000 Millions of SNPs World-wide collaboration

Future Whole genome sequencing

? Entire genome sequence

World-wide collaboration

SPLASH: Structure of Populations, Levels of Abundance, and Status of Humpbacks

Meyer, E.T. (2009). Moving from small science to big science: Social and organizational impediments to large

scale data sharing. In Jankowski, N. (Ed.), E-Research: Transformation in Scholarly Practice (Routledge

Advances in Research Methods series). New York: Routledge.

19

Humpback whales

20

e-Research in Sweden

• Sweden has a major e-Research initiative

• ’Universal’ personal identification

• Uniquely powerful datasets (e.g. twin registry)

• Significance: If Swedes can’t do it, no one can?

• Use of population data in a ’transparent’ society with high trust between people, authorities and researchers…

• …but, implementation of secure distributed access and ’incidents’ creating public concerns

• Swedish National Data Service

Swiss BioGrid Novartis

Annotation

Size

(no. of words)

Entries (topical

+ alphabetical + page-by-page) Contributors

Book Form Annotation: Weisenburger’s

Gravity’s Rainbow 162000 904 1 (22)

Wiki: Against the Day

455057 120 + 1358 + 4067

235

Comparison of book and wiki annotation efforts

Source: Schroeder, R., & Besten, M. D. (2008). Literary Sleuths Online: e-Research collaboration on the Pynchon Wiki. Information, Communication & Society, 11(2), 167 - 187.

Weisenburger vs. the Wiki on Pynchon

Fig. 1 Culturomic analyses study millions of books at once.

J Michel et al. Science 2011;331:176-182

Published by AAAS

Source: Moretti, F. (2011). Network Theory, Plot Analysis. New Left Review 68, p. 81

Browsing and Searching: Humanities

Libraries

Journals

Peers

79%

66%

Google

Google Scholar

59%

55%

62%

83%

48%

76%

95%

Visit the library

Browse library materials online

Search library materials online

Citation chaining

Browse printed journals

Browse online journals

Consult peers and experts Report available at http://www.rin.ac.uk/humanities-case-studies

TITLE

83%

78%

78%

72%

72%

63%

39%

37%

36%

36%

33%

29%

29%

26%

25%

16%

14%

12%

7%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

Google

Browsing or reading online journals

Peers or experts

Searching databases (e.g. Web of Science, arXiv)

Citation chaining

Browsing databases (e.g. Web of Science, arXiv)

Students

Notification services

Google Scholar

Email lists

Browsing library materials online

Browsing or reading print journals

Keyword searches of journals

Wikis

Web 2.0 services

Keyword searches of library materials

Browsing library materials in person

RSS Feeds

Social network sites n=76 Report available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1991753

Physical Sciences

Important Information Resources

63%

100%

73%

90%

87%

71%

100%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Zooniverse

Nanoscience

Earth Science

Chemistry

Nuclear Physics

Gamma Ray Burst

Particle Physics

Google

n=76

Google or Google Scholar as1st or 2nd most Important strategy

30%

36%

50%

40%

21%

20%

0%

60%

27%

0%

7%

0%

0%

0%

80%

55%

50%

47%

21%

20%

0%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Nanoscience

Earth Science

Particle Physics

Nuclear Physics

Gamma Ray Burst

Chemistry

ZooniverseGoogle

Google Scholar

Either Google or Google Scholar

n=76

Digital as a dirty word

I do feel pressure to work more with originals than with the digital images, but for the most part I do feel like I get more out of using these images on my computer. But there’s a certain pressure that that’s not what top scholars do because that’s not what top scholars did 25 years ago

“

What difference does it make?

– A physical core network of digital tools and data (computational manipulability)

– A research community focuses its efforts

– The expandable (‘clouds’) capacity of research instruments + new organizational modes

= ongoing diffusion of e-Research across domains

– Limits of this spread = limits of attention on new fronts towards which there are orientations: ‘advances’ versus existing directions

Research Technologies and Driving Forces

• Off-the-shelf and special purpose, but ‘all-purpose’ (passport-like) machines across contexts

• A hard core around which researchers can focus attention on a common research front

• Movements (SIMs, Frickel and Gross) to computerize (mathematize?) research (Kling)

• Core (research technologies) plus organization and movements - driving science (and research)

The sociology of advancing (online) knowledge production

• Research instruments plus mathematics -> high-consensus rapid-discovery science

• Orientation to a community of researchers at the research front

• Focus of attention limited by law of small numbers (Collins)

• The extension of computation into research

• The limits of understanding and explaining research-in-the-making…

…versus a movement that applies across research

Oxford Internet Institute

With support from:

Eric T. Meyer eric.meyer@oii.ox.ac.uk

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=120

Ralph Schroeder ralph.schroeder@oii.ox.ac.uk

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=120