Even though sharing YouTube links with our friends on Twitter and Facebook might seem a simple and quick action with no consequences, when millions of users are doing so every day it is something much more important. In fact, it becomes possible to track how interest for content items is spreading across social networks to improve performance of the content delivery networks serving those items. This is the problem we have addressed in a recent paper which will appear at the upcoming WWW 2011 conference.
I'm just reading this brilliant book by Lewis Hyde about the idea of the gift, & it occurs to me that Zuckerberg's crime is to take social data we give one another, and reduce it by monetizing/commoditizing it....this is, I suppose what Jaron Lanier says in "you are not a gadget", too...
See also here and here.
Meanwhile, I was at the EPSRC's "wrapup" workshop for the WINES programme of research - this was trying to see if there are lessons in how this large managed programme of research on wireless and intelligent sensor network systems worked so well - it started with a Grand Challenge, and isn't ending with the funding, but lives on in quite a few other projects - specifically in Cambridge, we have the Intelligent Energy Aware Networks project, plus a giant IKC in smart infrastructures...for example....the main thing seemed to be that the community was a real one with common interests and the challenge was very well timed in terms of feasibility and technology maturity.
Anyhow, we may try and create a new (but different) programme by trying to repeat the circumstances somehow - one area this might look at is the design of networked systems for supporting human behaviours rather than just supporting information exchange.
