Social Ism
I'm reminded again that everyone discovers DNA at the same time.
The social software meme seems to be everywhere. By software, I think everyone
means web applications. Yesterday,
citing an earlier Ross Mayfield post, I suggested:
"If the Net's open protocols weren't in place and
agreed upon, we could never improve it with the more highly abstracted,
software-only,
permission-free
improvements, social
software really, that we can now imagine together.
Our primary hope depends on our shared imagination, freed from the limited
horizons of those who would manage us into irrelevance. As the ad says, we've
already got the shoes. Now Just Do It."
And Ross Mayfield said:
"The physical and logical infrastructure of the web has reached a maturity
while usage has surpassed a tipping point where it is ingrained in most
people's lives. As people have become participants on the web, they
are building a new social infrastructure, connection by connection."
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Social
Networking Models
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|
Network
Type
|
Connection
|
Example
|
| Explicit |
Declarative |
Ryze |
| Physical |
In-person |
Meetup |
| Conversational |
Communication |
LiveJournal;
Weblogs |
| Private |
Referral |
Friendster |
| |
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© 2003
Ross Mayfield
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"The above table provides a framework for understanding
how Social Networking Models differ by how personal connections are made. When
a community is served by Social Software, its design places limits on
how relationships are formed, especially in how strangers make initial
connections."
(And conversely, design might focus participants' energies to surpass current
norms. FWIW, Xpertweb is an explicit network. Every data item is entered
by
the participants.)
This
is an important entry by Ross, who posts important things several times
a day. Here are some other excerpts:
"Social
Software design fosters specific social norms by regulating possible
behavior. Regulation is a good thing. A stem cell can grow
into any cell in the human body not by hard coded instructions of what
to become, but regulators telling it what not to become. Simple
rules in complex adaptive systems, like social networks, yield complex
results. And as Clay Shirky said, Social
Software encodes political bargains that
are required because of natural social tension."
"...Trust
ascends through these different models. You are more likely to
trust someone introduced through a referral than someone you know through
conversation than someone you meet in person for the first time than
someone who declares their background and interests. However, speed
descends through these models. You can quickly navigate and introduce
yourself through an Explicit Network, especially compared to working
your way through a Private Network."
Aha, the trust thing again, as Stuart Henshall urges
us to
focus upon.
I'm a Johnny-come-lately
to the social software conversation, and no match for Ross Mayfield. But
I find we've been
working on social
software
for
years. I
can't imagine software more social than Xpertweb which, though its purpose
is unabashedly commercial, intends to socialize its users
by the character of user ratings it tracks and publishes. You might say
that Xpertweb is
a set of values expressed through users' valuations. As Einstein is quoted, "Everything
that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts
cannot necessarily be counted."
Social software then, at a minimum, should at least make sure that things
that matter are easier to count than they are without the
software. Any other attributes may make the software elegant or compelling
or easy to use, but the social part seems to be the trick of newly
exposing communal activities or opinions that were not previously visible.
So that sets the bar for social software. We recognize
it because it lets us start to count things we care about, but the designer
has to figure out what those things are. Presumably they're not obvious yet,
or we'd already be counting them. What characteristic, theme perhaps,
might indicate something needs new counting tools?
Homeless to Harvard
. . . is the name of a new Lifetime
movie about the rise of
Liz Murray, whose story was profiled on 20/20 last
fall,
"By age 15, Murray was homeless, her mother had died
of AIDS and her father was on the streets.
Murray determined after her mother’s death that her life would be different.
She refused to end up like her mom. The best way to avoid that fate was to
go back to school."
So Elizabeth finished High School in two years, got a job
and scholarship through The New York Times and got accepted
at Harvard.
We will all be inspired by this movie, as we must be by Liz
Murray's story. But oddly enough, it resonates with a quote from a retired
Air Force General talking about the current war plan.
Ordinary Need Not Apply
General Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak, retired former
chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, interviewed last Wednesday by OregonLive.com,
said:
"I never made a plan that relied on the courage of my
own troops. You hope that -- and they generally will -- fight bravely.
Your plan ought to be predicated on more realistic assumptions."
McPeak's point could be applied to societies. Should it be
necessary to be so above average to achieve the dreams that we tell ourselves
are our
birthright? Our society's accepted wisdom is that anyone can achieve their
dream, yet so few even glimpse that dream that the conventional wisdom sounds
like marketing. Maybe it's a lottery ad.
The dominant fiction
of our time is that we in the U.S. of A. don't need no stinkin' social
safety nets or universal health insurance or the other attributes of the advanced
European
societies.
We
don't need them because we're in the land of unfettered opportunity. Look
at the Liz Murray example. Or the late Senator Moynihan, or so many others
who
had what it takes to rise out of poverty. The problem is that not many people
like that achieve their dream. Hell, most people can't achieve their parents' dream.
The stories may support our national fiction but the
facts don't. A
shrinking
percentage of the population has the opportunity to live as well as their
parents did and work
as little as their parents did and have
acceptable health care, including people who go to Harvard on scholarship.
If software is to be social, those attributes are reasonable design goals:
to return to a pattern in which each generation's prospects are statistically
better than their parents' prospects. Think of it as compassionate conservatism–advocating
a return to past expectations.
Those are the goals of Xpertweb. Will it work? Your guess is as good as mine.
But from the nettle of depressing observations, we might pluck some positive notions
that are still so hard to prove, we can't yet count on them:
- Most productivity comes from people who do not feel secure.
- Most of the money is in the hands of people who do not
feel secure.
- Many people who do not feel secure don't feel they have
the opportunities they need.
- Many people who do not feel secure spend a lot of time
not doing much.
- People may not need explicit organizations if equipped with software
that organizes their energies as well.
- Perhaps social software could help people who do not feel
secure to bootstrap, together, a better tomorrow.
If it is possible, that's the kind of software we're designing here.
11:35:07 PM 
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