Applying mechanical philosophy to web science: The case of social machines

Social machines are a prominent focus of attention for those who work in the field of Web and Internet science. Although a number of online systems have been described as social machines (examples include the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Reddit, and Galaxy Zoo), there is, as yet, little consensus as to the precise meaning of the term “social machine.” This presents a problem for the scientific study of social machines, especially when it comes to the provision of a theoretical framework that directs, informs, and explicates the scientific and engineering activities of the social machine community. The present paper outlines an approach to understanding social machines that draws on recent work in the philosophy of science, especially work in so-called mechanical philosophy. This is what might be called a mechanistic view of social machines. According to this view, social machines are systems whose phenomena (i.e., events, states, and processes) are explained via an appeal to (online) socio-technical mechanisms. We show how this account is able to accommodate a number of existing attempts to define the social machine concept, thereby yielding an important opportunity for theoretical integration.

Shopping for an English Language Tutor

English is often considered to be the international language of commerce and, more recently, e-commerce. English is also the predominant language of the internet, science, and many, the language of higher education. As a result, English tutoring institutions are thriving in the Chinese Mainland in recent years in a substantial and competitive market. The objective of this chapter is to reveal what are the factors that affect Chinese college students' selection of English tutoring institutions in China so that tutoring institution managers may focus on the most important criteria for their prospective customers. In this chapter, 212 Chinese college students participated in the online survey. The authors analyzed the correlation between purchase intention and price, brand image, service variety, and customer relationship. Through data analysis, they show that price, brand image, service variety, and customer relationships are all positively associated with Chinese college students' purchase intention of English tutoring institutions.

Under the background of “Internet Plus”, the innovation of the training mode of tourism management professionals in higher vocational colleges is discussed

With the continuous development of society, China’s Internet science and technology and computer information technology are also developing and progressing. In this process, Internet technology has had a great impact on many professional fields, Internet technology has become an indispensable part of people’s lives. With the concept of “Internet Plus”, various industries have set off a trend about the combination of the Internet and traditional fields. The field of education is no exception, in the “Internet plus” background of the field of education has also set off a wave of reform, the current teaching of vocational colleges and universities are gradually combined with Internet technology. The traditional offline teaching concept and teaching method can not meet the needs of tourism management talents in the society at the time. Therefore, under the background of the Internet, the combination of education and the Internet is an inevitable trend, in the training of tourism management professionals in domestic vocational colleges, Internet technology has greatly promoted the training of tourism professionals. Therefore, this paper mainly revolves around the innovative development of the training mode of tourism management personnel in higher vocational colleges under the background of “Internet plus”, and hopes that this paper can provide a reference for the research on the training mode of tourism management professionals in higher vocational education.

Analysis of sponsorship networks and cross-domain knowledge exchange: an empirical study on Zhihu

Purpose This study aims to analyze the structural characteristics of knowledge exchange in Zhihu Lives to provide feasible suggestions for improving the creative enthusiasm of knowledge providers. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses the domain classification of Zhihu Lives to construct a cross-domain knowledge exchange network. Findings This research makes the following findings: the small-world effect exists in the sponsorship network and is conducive to enhancing the learning willingness of knowledge providers; significant sponsorships and strong learning willingness exist among knowledge providers; the knowledge exchange is obvious among the fields of education, reading and writing, business and lifestyle and the fields of music, film, games, art, the internet, science and technology, design, financial economy and occupation; and knowledge exchange is obvious among the internal fields of education, reading and writing, and business and life style, between the internal fields of music, film, and games and art and between the internal fields of the internet, science and technology, design, financial economy and occupation. Originality/value This study can provide practical suggestions for the following development of the platform by analyzing the special phenomenon of knowledge exchange in the present stage of knowledge exchange.

Percolation and Internet Science

Percolation, in its most general interpretation, refers to the “flow” of something (a physical agent, data or information) in a network, possibly accompanied by some nonlinear dynamical processes on the network nodes (sometimes denoted reaction–diffusion systems, voter or opinion formation models, etc.). Originated in the domain of theoretical and matter physics, it has many applications in epidemiology, sociology and, of course, computer and Internet sciences. In this review, we illustrate some aspects of percolation theory and its generalization, cellular automata and briefly discuss their relationship with equilibrium systems (Ising and Potts models). We present a model of opinion spreading, the role of the topology of the network to induce coherent oscillations and the influence (and advantages) of risk perception for stopping epidemics. The models and computational tools that are briefly presented here have an application to the filtering of tainted information in automatic trading. Finally, we introduce the open problem of controlling percolation and other processes on distributed systems.