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Simon DeDeo: Wikipedia and the Microphysics of Political Order

Simon Dedeo will present his explorations in social physics: can we quantify and predict social dynamics? Employing advanced physical methods, the talk will unveil the collective decision making processes behind Wikipedia and much more.

Simon DeDeo giving a lecture
Simon DeDeo

Info about event

Time

Thursday 23 October 2014,  at 13:00 - 15:00

Location

Aarhus University, Nobelparken, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 4, building 1483-3, IMC meeting room (312)

Organizer

Riccardo Fusaroli, Interacting Minds Centre

Wikipedia and the Microphysics of Political Order

Technology allows for vastly accelerated social evolution in the online sphere. Multi-modal, multi-player, and driven by a diversity of interests, social systems such as Wikipedia are larger than many cities, but appear to develop political order—not only mutual expectations and social norms, but hierarchies and institutions—over the course of days and weeks, rather than decades and centuries. Drawing on five years of collaborative work in both human and animal behavior, we present new results on how the minute-by-minute decision-making of hundreds of thousands of individuals in Wikipedia leads to the formation of emergent institutions that, independent of any single individual, regulate and manage the behavior of thousands. New quantitative methods allow us to track not only the formation of these institutions, but their higher order logic, including the developing tension between the rule of law, democratic accountability, and oligarchic capture.


Simon DeDeo, Indiana University and the Santa Fe Institute

  • Assistant Professor, School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, 2014—.

  • Research Fellow of the Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2013—. Omidyar Fellow, 2010–2012; Interdisciplinary research with focus on theory of computation, biological information processing, social decision-making, and collective phenomena.

  • Postdoctoral Fellow of the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, University of Tokyo, 2009. Focus on effective theories and statistical physics.

  • Postdoctoral Fellow of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, 2006–2009. Focus on theoretical and observational cosmological physics.