The Web and the Mind

Bangalore Science Forum, February 2016
The Web and the Mind
Srinath Srinivasa
Web Science Lab
IIIT Bangalore
http://cds.iiitb.ac.in/wsl

Outline
A brief history of the WWW
Models of the Web
– Web as a Database/Repository
– Web as a Cognitive Extension of us
– Web as a socio-cognitive space
Social Machines
Web Science
Abstraction and Expression on the Web
Characterizing Online Collectives

Some Recent News Topics
Re-emergence of the free-speech debate
Personal liberty, sedition, Sec 66A, annoyance, …
“The right to be forgotten”
Privacy, accountability, personal liberty, …
Net Neutrality
Bridging the digital divide, neo-colonialism, “data darwinism”, …

Some Recent News Topics
Re-emergence of the free-speech debate
Personal liberty, sedition, Sec 66A, annoyance, …
“The right to be forgotten”
Privacy, accountability, personal liberty, …
Net Neutrality
Bridging the digital divide, neo-colonialism, “data darwinism”, …
W W WW W W

1989
CERN physicist Tim Berners-Lee lays out a
proposal for information management
called “Mesh”
Original proposal available from
http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposa
l.html
1990
Berners-Lee changes name to “World Wide
Web” while writing code for the Mesh
Creates three fundamental building blocks:
HTML
URL (later called URI)
HTTP

1990
First web page appears on the Internet
1991
Web available for access to people
outside of CERN
1993
WWW code made available for free on
a royalty-free basis forever by CERN
1994
Berners-Lee joins MIT to found the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Original logo for the WWW
Image source: Wikipedia

Design principles for WWW adopted by the W3C:
Decentralization
(no one controls content on the web)
Non-discrimination
(net neutrality)
Bottom-up design
(Open source, participatory approach to maintaining web code)
Universality
(Agnostic to computing platforms or hardware)
Consensus
(Participatory approach to web standards)
Source: webfoundation.org

1993
Mark Andreessen from NCSA releases Mosaic – the first graphical browser
for the web
1994
Andreessen, with two colleagues form Mosaic Communications Corporation
and release the first commercial web browser: Netscape Navigator
First International WWW conference is organized at CERN in May 1994
1996—2000
Dot com boom (“Get large or get lost” mantra) and birth of several first
generation search engines and e-commerce sites (Yahoo, Excite, Lycos,
Altavista, Amazon, …)

2001—2002
Dot com bust. Major web and Internet companies go bankrupt
(Excite, Lycos, Nortel Networks, Worldcom,...)
2002–
Web 2.0. Web reinvents itself as a participatory social medium
bringing social science and psychology central to thinking about
the web.

Models of the Web
The web is unlike any other technology developed so far
Unlike say cars or washing machines, there is only one web
Is the web a “technology” or a “tool” that we use or is it something else?
Notable paradigms of the Web considered by researchers:
Very large database
Digital library / Repository
A cognitive extension of ourselves
Participatory socio-cognitive space

Web as a Database
Early approaches (mid '90s) to
model the Web
Focused on the “semi-
structured” nature of the Web
and as a special case of managing
structured (RDBMS) databases
Research objectives: structured
and rich query semantics
Examples include: [AMM 97],
[Eng 98], WebQL
An example WebQL query
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebQL

Web as a Digital Library
Shift from:
Strict notions of “query” Looser notions of “retrieval” and
“relevance”
Strict notions of “schema” Looser notions of “ontology”
Emphasis still on retrieving information
Web still seen as a passive repository of information
Examples: [GR+ 97], [HMA 03]

Web as a Cognitive Extension of Ourselves
Rooted in Vannevar Bush's interpretation
of hypertext reflecting the way
information is organized in human brains
Focus on interpreting hyperlinks, rather
than (just) data on web pages
Hyperlink as a(n):
– Relevance indicator
– Endorsement
– Attention pathway
Examples: PageRank [BP 98], HITS
[GKR 98]
Memex

Web as a Socio-cognitive Space
Most contemporary paradigm for understanding the web
Web as an active, participatory, social space – people are no longer users, but participants
Shift of emphasis from retrieving information from the web to engaging users with the
web
The Web uses us as much as we use the Web!
Examples:
Crowdsourcing, Participatory authoring, Push notifications on social media, Click-baiting, etc.
The global mind and superintelligence

The Socio-cognitive Space
Image source:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin
/4433299610614823/

Web Science
From www.webscience.org
“Nothing like the Web has ever happened in all of human history. The scale of its impact
and the rate of its adoption are unparalleled. This is a great opportunity as well as an
obligation. If we are to ensure the Web benefits the human race we must first do our best
to understand it.
The Web is the largest human information construct in history. The Web is transforming
society. In order to understand what the Web is, engineer its future and ensure its social
benefit we need a new interdisciplinary field that we call Web Science.”

Social Machines
Represents a class of environments comprising of interplay between humans
and technology
Outputs of social machines a result of both human and algorithmic decisions
Building blocks of the global socio-cognitive space
“The Web is an engine to create abstract social machines”
– Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web [BH 09]
About Social Machines https://youtu.be/8Iz7ZqSOJGU

Social Machines

Web Observatory and Telescope
Image source: http://www.iconsmind.com/

Perspectives towards the Web
The Web is an
Opportunity
The Web is a Threat
The Web is.

Global
Socio-cognitive
Space
Aggregators
Twitter diplomacy
MOOC
Cognition
Attention
Emotions
Mental models
Macro
Effects
MicroEffects

On the micro effects of the global socio-cognitive space

A (highly) Simplified Model of Cognition
Declarative memory
Semantic
Episodic
Procedural memory
Reflexes
Motor control
Active mental model
Emotion and limbic
subsystem
Long-term
memory
Working memory
Frontal lobe
Amygdala

The psychological dimension of the
online free-speech debates

The Free Speech Conundrum

The Free Speech Conundrum
The holy grail of democratic societies – freedom of
speech (and expression) – is suddenly at the center
of a new found controversy
At the core of this debate is a call to distinguish
between “free speech” and “bad speech”

Free Speech and Bad Speech
The line is not always clear:
Disagreeing with popular opinion (free speech)
Supporting/opposing a political party (free speech)
Racial slur (bad speech)
Inciting mob violence publicly (bad speech)
Scholarly writing criticizing government or specific religions
(free speech considered bad speech in some places)
Artistic depiction that offends religious sentiments (let's not
even go there!)

Characterizing Speech
Claim:
The free speech versus bad speech debate presents a
false dilemma, which can never be completely resolved
Need:
Semantic characterization of speech and conversations
and creating awareness and tool-support for online
conversations based on this characterization

Abstraction and Expression
Articulation of our
objective understanding of
something
Communicates an idea
Articulation of our
subjective feeling about
something
Communicates an emotion

Abstraction and Expression
Reporting: mostly abstraction
Opinion: mix of abstraction and expression
Emotional reaction: mostly expression

Abstraction
● Semantic meta-construct used
to build our world view
● Processing is resource
intensive (“System 2” in
Prospect Theory [KT79]
terminology)
● Subject to innate cognitive
resistance in assimilation due to
factors like bounded
rationality and conformance
pressures
Images source: Wikipedia

Abstraction and Conformance
Asch Conformity Experiments

Conformance and Diffusion of Ideas
Information diffusion is faster in sparsely connected parts of a network, rather
than densely connected (entrenched) parts due to conformance effects.
Node d in the above figure does not switch to the new idea because of
conformance pressures from nodes e, f and g
Image Source: [Sri 06]

Models for Diffusion of Ideas
Typically based on an element of “criticality”
balancing: ability to communicate new idea, and
pressure to conform to existing ideas
Example models [EK 10]
Percolating clusters
Ising model
Cluster density based diffusion

Expression
● Semantic construct encapsulating
our emotional state for
communication
● Subconsciously affects receiver's
emotional state by means of
emotional contagion
● Emotional contagion also spreads
through the web (Ex: Facebook
Experiment [KGH 14])
● Characteristically different from
spread of ideas, which have a
natural resistance to assimilation
Images source: Wikipedia

Spread of Emotions
Models based on spread of epidemics, useful in modeling spread of
emotions
Emotions are psychosomatic phenomena causing both cognitive and
physical affect
Intense emotional states induce a state of trauma that have long range
repercussions like PTSD
Example epidemic models [EK 10]
– SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered/Resistant) useful for modeling
spread of intense emotions in a population
– SIS (Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible) useful for modeling spread of
mild emotions in a population

Abstraction versus Expression
Objective belief
Asserts an idea
Humans have innate resistance
towards ideas thrown at them
We need to have an “open
mind” to entertain new
abstractions
Subjective emotion
Communicates a feeling
Humans have innate “anti-
resistance” towards emotions
thrown at them
We need to be “mindful” of our
emotional state to be
unaffected by an incoming
emotion

Mental Model
Axiomatic framework within which we perform reasoning.
Encapsulates underlying assumptions, ground truths and inference rules
Active mental model
Reasoning and deduction carried out within the framework of the
currently active mental model
Any input that challenges the currently held mental model usually elicits an emotional
reaction (laughter, terror, etc.)
Linking Abstractions and Expressions

Characterizing Online Communication
Mental model 1 Mental model 2

Characterizing Online Communication
End Result?

The Intense Online World
Online communication tend to be more intense and
overwhelming due to following factors:
– Lack of coherence between mental models (due to
anonymity, asynchrony, solipsism, etc.)
– Interplay between abstractive and expressive content in
conversation
Emotions spread faster than ideas due to anti-resistance
Spread of emotions greatly complicates the spread of
ideas

Online Collectives

Wisdom of Crowds?
Not all groups of people form
“wise” crowds!

Coagulation
Abstraction and Expression can affect group behaviour in
different ways
A given abstraction or expression can “coagulate” over a
group of people (most people in the group think the same
way / most people in the group feel the same way)
Coagulation in abstraction and expression can explain
some failures of crowdsourcing efforts

Classification of Groups [SS 15]
Some coherence in
abstractions
(Ex: NPOV, NOR,V
for Wikipedia)
High coagulation
Low coagulation

Classification of Groups
Crowds
Group of people having shared attention but no shared abstraction or shared
expression
Rich in insights due to diverse opinions
No major emotional contagion
Members act as individuals
Pose high cognitive load on members
Unstable
Wise Crowds
Share some common abstraction in the form of “ground rules” to facilitate
management of diverse opinions without degenerating

Herds
Group sharing a common abstraction
“Herd mentality” pertains to every member of the
group thinking in the same way
High in persuasive power
Low on collective insight
Manipulable by external forces if the characteristics of
the herd are known

Mobs
Groups sharing a common emotional state
Common emotional state could be either positive
emotion (jubilant football fans) or negative emotion
(lynch mobs)
Need not have common abstraction (members of an
angry mob may each be venting personal frustrations
through the mob)
Highly unpredictable behaviour

Gangs
Groups sharing both a common abstraction and common
emotion
All members of the group think and feel the same way about
something
Passionate and highly persuasive
Common emotion could be positive (The researcher “gang of
four” on design patterns) or negative (bandits and other
organized criminals)
Powerful and highly impactful collective actions

A Computational Model

User Evaluation
Dataset comprising of tweets pertaining to #DelhiPolls,
#DelhiElections
35 evaluators given a set of 20 randomly picked tweets
Evaluators were asked a set of indirect questions
seeking their opinion about coagulation levels of
abstractions and expressions

Evaluation Results

Free Speech Revisited
What appears as the online free speech conundrum is actually a complex phenomenon
caused by abstraction, expression, dissonance across mental models and group
coherence of abstractions and expressions and amplified by the scale of the Web
The issue is not (just) a question of what is or should be legal provisions around online
speech
We need better models to understand cognitive and emotional aspects of human
communication and their impacts on a global scale
Linearly extrapolating existing models from social psychology bound to fail because,
never before in human history was there a global socio-cognitive conversational space
like the Web

The web is affecting what we think and feel – thus molding us at
a very fundamental level, offering both opportunities and
challenges
Our understanding of web-scale cognitive phenomena too
premature to advocate any form of social or regulatory
solutions
Web Science: A rich area of research for enthusiastic and
curious minds!

May you be born in interesting times...
-- an ancient Chinese curse
Thank You!

References
[AMM 97] G.O. Arocena, A.O. Meldelzon and G.A. Mihaila, Applications of a Web query language, in: Proc. of the 6th
International World Wide Web Conference, April 7–11, 1997, Santa Clara, California, USA,
http://www6.nttlabs.com/HyperNews/get/PAPER267.html
[GR+ 97] Gudivada, V.N.; Raghavan, V.V.; Grosky, William I; Kasanagottu, R., "Information retrieval on the World Wide
Web," Internet Computing, IEEE , vol.1, no.5, pp.58,68, Sep/Oct 1997
[BP 98] Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page. 1998. The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine. In
Proceedings of the seventh international conference on World Wide Web 7 (WWW7), Philip H. Enslow, Jr. and Allen Ellis
(Eds.). Elsevier Science Publishers B. V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, The Netherlands, 107-117.
[Eng 98] Carlos F. Enguix. 1998. Database querying on the World Wide Web: UniGuide, an object-relational search engine
for Australian universities. Comput. Netw. ISDN Syst. 30, 1-7 (April 1998), 567-572. DOI=10.1016/S0169-7552(98)00080-4
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0169-7552(98)00080-4
[GKR 98] David Gibson, Jon Kleinberg, and Prabhakar Raghavan. 1998. Inferring Web communities from link topology. In
Proceedings of the ninth ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermedia : links, objects, time and space---structure in
hypermedia systems: links, objects, time and space---structure in hypermedia systems (HYPERTEXT '98). ACM, New York,
NY, USA, 225-234.
[HMA 03] Ian Horrocks, Deborah L. McGuinness, and Christopher A. Welty. 2003. Digital libraries and web-based
information systems. In The description logic handbook, Franz Baader, Diego Calvanese, Deborah L. McGuinness, Daniele
Nardi, and Peter F. Patel-Schneider (Eds.). Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA 427-449.

References
[BH 09] Berners-Lee, Tim; J. Hendler (2009). "From the Semantic Web to social
machines: A research challenge for AI on the World WideWeb" (PDF). Artificial
Intelligence. doi:10.1016/j.artint.2009.11.010.
[EK 10] David Easley, Jon Kleinberg. Networks, Crowds and Markets: Reasoning about
a Highly Connected World. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
[KA 79] Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. "Prospect theory: An analysis of
decision under risk." Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1979): 263-
291.
[KGH 14] Kramer, Adam DI, Jamie E. Guillory, and Jeffrey T. Hancock. "Experimental
evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks."
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.24 (2014): 8788-8790.
[SS 15] Nirmal Kumar Sivaraman, Srinath Srinivasa. Abstractions, Expressions and
Online Collectives. Proceedings of ACM WebSci 2015, Oxford, UK, June 2015.

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