IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 22

(or multiple combinations) of
human and non-human actors
interacting in networks to produce particular outcomes...
our point is this: the web does
not exist as something separate from its doing" (http://
journal.webscience.org/297/2/
manifestoACM.pdf).

"Ten years ago, the field of Web Science was created to explore the science underlying the
Web from a socio-technical perspective including its mathematical properties, engineering
principles, and social impacts (Berners-Lee et al., Science, 2006). Ten years later, we are
learning much as the interdisciplinary endeavor to understand the Web's global information
space continues to grow."
A Manifesto for Web Science @10
http://www.webscience.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/
117/2016/12/WebSci-mani festo-v19.pdf

defined the scope and nature of
the conversations that Web Science
needed to have:
1) Web Science must be the genuine intersection of discipline;
i.e., it cannot be allowed to be
sociology or computer science
of the Web.
2) Web Science must look both
ways to see how the Web is made
by humans and how humans are
made by the Web.
3) Web Science must follow all the
actors (individual, groups, and
technologies) and trace the
n e t works implicated in the
Web in the broadest sense and
understand the effects of these
networks.
4) Web Science must move beyond
narrow epistemologies and
methodologies to enable a science that can examine and
explain both micro and macro
phenomena.
5) Web Science must be a critical
discipline. If it is to speak to the
desire for the Web to be prohuman - it must develop theor e t ic a l t h i n k i n g a nd pu s h
towards critical, political social
theory to critique the direction
of travel, to challenge the Web
and society.
As the pace of technology change
and churn quickens, the intensity
and urgency of the discussion about
what it means for the world and for
all of us as people and organizations
and communities are both accelerating as well.

The difficulty is that, often, decisions are made that seem to privilege the interests of some of the
larger commercial and institutional
players who have taken over the
commanding heights of this new
digital world.
The Web Science response seeks
to redress some of that imbalance
with inquiry, careful research, and
an investment in different, more
inclusive conversations. A different
mix of voices has to be crafted -
individual people, the interests of
society more broadly, the needs of
nature, and the fragile environmental systems on which we rely,
There is an insight that suggests,
as management writer Margaret
Wheatley has pointed out, that the
best way to change a conversation

Ultimately, that discussion is
about some equally big challenges of power, control, authority, and
accountability.
How the big decisions are being
made about technology's future,
the impact new technology has on
the choices and chances of people
as they interact with new tools and
platforms, how the conversations
from which these choices flow and
are set up, and who gets to contribute to those conversations - these
issues are all being contested pretty
much every day.
"...'the web' ceases to be
something technical - asocial
or independent from its use -
and becomes a combination

14 Axioms of "Group Genius"
1) The future is rational only in hindsight.
2) You can't get there from here but you can get here from there.
3) Discovering you don't know something is the first step to knowing it.
4) Everything someone tells you is true: they are reporting their experience
of reality.
5) To argue with someone else's experience is a waste of time.
6) To add someone else's experience to your experience - to create a new experience -
is possibly valuable.
7) You understand the instructions only after you have assembled the red wagon.
8) Everyone in this room has the answer. The purpose of this intense experience is to
stimulate one, several, or all of us to extract and remember what we already know.
9) Creativity is the elimination of options.
10) If you can't have fun with the problem, you will never solve it.
11) The only valid test of an idea, concept or theory is what it enables you to do.
12) In every adverse condition there are hundreds of possible solutions.
13) You fail until you succeed.
14) Nothing fails like success.
http://www.mgtaylor.com/mgtaylor/jotm/firstqtr1998/axioms_intro.htm

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

∕

SEPTEMBER 2017

http://http:// http://www.webscience.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/ http://journal.webscience.org/297/2/ http://www.mgtaylor.com/mgtaylor/jotm/firstqtr1998/axioms_intro.htm

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017