Category: Social Software

This morning I stopped by this online forum about terrorism and democracy, organized by conference that David Weinberger and Joi Ito are attending.
In the forum, a set of people with diverse nationalities (US, Europe, Middle East, Asia), talk to each other at an abstract level about big topics like “terrorism” and “democracy”.
Individuals express their own philosophical background and favorite arguments in their own rhetorical language (socialist, anti-american, liberal, non-violent, pro-violent resistence, etc). There is some interesting comparision between tactics of violence and tacticts of non-violence. Yet, there is no moderation that I can see, and little social pressure to bring people talk to each other rather than past each other.
The people are not part of any organizational structure, and are not trying to create any action. There is no shared objective, so people can talk forever without reaching understanding, agreement or resolution.
It is exciting that the forum attracted such a geographically and philosophically diverse group. But without facilitation and the creation of shared purpose, this exercise in sustained mutual incomprehensive is quite frustrating.
Just like a room and a table don’t create a meeting, a discussion forum does not create deliberative democracy. There may be methods that work to make this type of conversation productive. They weren’t used in that forum.

Muni Wireless reports on about Neigbornode, an bulletin board application managed by a group of NYU students and alumni, and publicized by New York City Wireless that allows neighbors to post for-sale items and gossip.
The guy behind the software is John Geraci a grad student at NYU who also did the Grafedia project, which connects 3d graffiti with online images. It doesn’t do the technically cool thing of associating the online graffiti with spacial coordinates. Instead, it uses a hobo code to mark the graffiti, and fellow cyberhoboes can find the link and associated images on the net.

Ross Mayfield offers an insightful critique of the limits of personalization, which has long been seen as the premier way to make content more valuable. This is a very good point — the flaw with the “daily me” is that it restricts my information flow to things I know aready.
I think they go together nicely. Social filtering lets you branch out, experiment, grow, and learn from the tastes and interests of your friends and colleagues.
Personalization is still needed to manage focus amid vast quantities information, even considering the collaborative input of friends and colleagues. I value Ross’s links on social software and business trends, and Rick’s political tales, but would less interested in socially filtered feed of sports scores. (Sorry guys!).
I think about it with a spacial metaphor. You want a familiar starting point, and a set of directions to explore, where the interests of your social network represent roads out.

A paper by UT professor Miles Efron shows that links do a better job at differentiating between left and right wing blogs than words do.
US left and right wing blogs might both mention “social security” or “iraq” but they would express different opinions. But those blogs would be likely to cite different sources.
This has interesting implications for persuasion. Lakoff would argue that to persuade a conservative of a more traditionally liberal position, one would appeal to that conservative’s nurturant side.
Efron’s results suggest that it’s not enough to invoke compassion — it might help more to cite the Heritage Foundation.
Thanks Prentiss.

Come to think of it, I think there are two main functions needed for managing large numbers of online connections.
The first is the butler, for managing incoming requests.
The second is the reminder service for monitoring the news and recurring events for online acquaintances, and providing reminders for occasional events like birthdays, job changes, and more frequent events like blog posts and wiki updates.
The interface for this would be a more subtle version of an aggregator notification service. This upgraded notifier would provide visibly stronger notification for dramatic events and for those closer in the circle, and weaker signals for ordinary events and those further away.
The notifier would aggregate signals from multiple sources, enabling one to monitor more people and more sources in a shorter amount of time.

One tactic that comes to mind for managing online connections is the automated equivalent of an 18th/19th century butler, who mediated social interaction for the wealthy at a time when the intrusive, in-person visit was a primary method for making social contact.
The butler has broad and nuanced knowledged of the circumstances in which the Lady is to be acknowledged to be IN.
Today’s online presence indicators are flat; they tell everyone the same message; that one is working, or eating ice cream in front of the television, or AWAY.
A butler would understand whether one is working or not, and would put through different connections at different hours.
A butler would understand the understand the nuances of one’s social circle, and admit some people automatically, allowing others to wait, and requiring still others to leave a message.
We also need the 18th/19th century interface to the Butler, the calling card, which conveys by its printed message and accompanying whether the caller is a longlost relative whom the butler may not remember; a recommendation from a reputable source; a specific message about the urgency of the visit.
Along with butlers and calling cards would come social norms for interpreting the signals — when a calling card is a polite formality; when to interpret the declining of a visit as a crippling snub and when as scheduling circumstance. Even with a butler, there will be mistimings and misunderstandings, yielding to new materials for comedy and drama.

Chris Allen writes about a contemporary dilemma: how to manage hundreds of connections in online social networks. It’s today’s version of a problem that’s as old as the first city; how to live in groups much larger than the families and tribes we’re wired to understand.
Chris Allen wrestles with the dilemma of how to manage a social network with hundreds of acquaintances:

As someone who now has over 171 professional “connections” in my LinkedIn Profile, 198 “friends” on Orkut, many more non-intersecting friends and acquaintances on Tribe.Net, LiveJournal, and other social networking services, as well as a plethora of correspondents that I only interact with via email, I am trying reconcile a mismatch between my connections and my own Dunbar Number.

Joi Ito has complained of the opposite problem — running into maximum number of allowable friends on Orkut and AIM, and also of the same problem: “I need to forget someone every time I meet someone I want to remember because I’m having a buffer overflow on my people recognition memory.”
Like physical cities, online networks bring people into contact with numerous casual acquaintances.
Entire genres of writing evolved to explore the opportunities, risks, and emerging norms of urban social life. Ben Franklin pioneered techniques of self-organization and civic organization for the new world of capitalist opportunity and democratic obligation; his advice manuals and autobiography spread the gospel.
The 19th century novel (think Great Expectations and Sister Carrie) deal with themes of a stranger coming to the city, establishing bonds of trust or being lured by con games. Dale Carnegie, writing in 1937, wrote a self-help manual for urban aspirants eager to learn the lucrative art of networking.
danah boyd often critiques the awkwardnessful interfaces of online social network tools, which automate plaintive requests for friendship and guilt-inducing demands for favors.
Chris suggests tools that will help people manage attention to a social network:

Could simple categorization help improve expectations for attention levels that various associates receive from you? Are there ways that social networking services, acting as an intermediary, could better manage disappointment-inducing events, such as a decision to spend less attention on an associate?

.
Tools will surely be helpful. Databases have long helped salespeople remember the names of the children and pets of their customers. Tools can surely be improved. The Linked In form for passing on a reference request is a social horror — it turns the pleasant, virtuous, social capital-building experience of recommending a friend into a guilt-inducing, bureacratic obligation.
Chris Allen also rightly points out that the problem isn’t just in the interfaces, it’s in the social situation created by online network exposure to hundreds of acquaintances; far more than the human capacity for close connection.
We’ll also need novels, advice columns, tutorials — as much or more than tool features — to handle the social and ethical dilemmas of life in the virtual city.
David Weinberger writes about how we’re becoming differently social, redefining friendship with online connections that are based on subject rather than physical proximity.
There are novels and memoir genre writing about dilemmas of real and phony intimacy online. Pamela Ribon’s novel, Why Girls are Weird was about the varieties of truth and deception, false intimacy and real intimacy that come with keeping an online journal. Justin Hall has a breakdown online, over the fear that online exhibitionism might be incompatible with real connection.
To address Chris’ dilemma directly, I think part of the problem is being a post-freudian modern; intimacy is the ultimate goal of relationship and a source of secular transcendence. We need to go back to a more 18th century concept of public identity to describe the pleasures and rewards of broad acquaintance.
Another part of the answer is a recalibrated bullshit detector for online social interaction — learning to detect and navigate the nuances of sincerity and phoniness: annoying people on the make who “friend” everybody they meet; the cheerful grass-roots self-promotion of folks who give out business cards with their blog address; and the ongoing, global parties hosted by maestros like Jon Lebkowsky and Joi Ito.
A third part of the answer is a recalibrated set of social signals for strength of connection, where (for example) an online social network “friend” request is a light signal, a blog comment is a slightly stronger signal; individual conversation by IM/IRC is stronger than that, followed by email; meeting in 3d is a strong signal of potential friendship and periodic online followup is its confirmation; and repeated, unreciprocated comments, pings, or emails are signs of stalking.
It’s a good, rich set of questions. Thanks, Chris!

There’s discussion about using the Mac mini as a media center: “the central brain of our system; the glue that holds all the devices together. It can serve the role of scheduler, controller, audio/video recorder, audio/video playback, audio/video download, and it even makes a decent audio/video production unit, as well.” The cute li’l box has processing, storage and network to serve, slurp, and schedule.
But what I’m missing isn’t just processing power — it’s interface focus.
Right now, my laptop is a fine media machine if I want to focus on watching video or listening to music. But it’s useless for background tasks. Any media – related task steals 100% of focus and processing power.
What I really want is a good-sized, networked, tablet that I can use for social software like Last.fm for simultaneous playing and browsing. An iPod UI is fine for selection, but it’s just too small for the social and topical browsing that’s key to my media experience. I want it to be portable, not tied to a desktop display. The storage doesn’t need to be tied to the display — a networked storage gizmo would be ideal.
The mini combines the storage, networking, and processing, and leaves off the display. I want the display and processing, which can be decoupled from the storage.
This is all possible today with a good-sized budget. A table is $1600, a network storage gizmo is $800. In order to make a tablet practical, vendors would need to cost-optimize for a configuration that splits display from storage.
Note to more advanced home media hackers — what do you think?

In a technology and politics mailing list, there was some enthousiastic discussion about developing common taxonomy in order to build political agreement.
I think this view misunderstands the role of categories in shared understanding.
At fine-grained, concrete level, a shared schema for voter and constituent data is extremely powerful.
At the larger level, though, labels don’t get you that far toward shared understanding and shared effective action.
Meaning isn’t in the nouns. Meaning is in the stories we tell. Meaning is in the actions we take. Meaning is annealed out of conversation. Meaning is in a strategy and supporting tactics.
Folksonomy might make the software challenge easier — the disparate political blogs and websites could just pick their own categories, and aggregation tools like Technorati tags could reveal the implicit concensus about labels.
But folksonomy won’t get us that far toward shared meaning and action, either. Del.icio.us tells us that the most popular tags are blog, programming, web, music, software, design, news, and linux. The tag popularity metric shows what topics are popular, and lets the reader browse through the popular content under the tag.
It still requires an act of synthesis to describe what people really care about, when they bookmark “music”, “software”, and “design”.
It still requires acts of human organization and communication to build shared understanding, agreement, and effective action.

It’s been brought to my attention that the nofollow tag is supposed to pertain only to comments.
This is small comfort to those of use who experience weblogs as conversation. Some of the best comments refer to resources, citations, counter-examples. Links that are especially valuable to page-rank, because they are selected in context.
Google etc are trying to remove the reward from spam, but in the process they’re removing the reward for conversation.