Comments on: Social software is political science in executable form

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:25:33 +0000

Scott, let me extend Balaji’s comment by pointing out that we have recently been going down the road of trying to extract some lessons from the history of Usenet; so let me refer you to some of that discussion at:

http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/08/24/facebook-and-the-enterprise-part-7-communities/#comment-178032

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:19:02 +0000

Balaji, you have to wonder whether or not Burning Man is deteriorating along the same lines as Usenet (and probably for the same reasons)!

By: Balaji Sowmyanarayanan

Balaji Sowmyanarayanan — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:17:41 +0000

@Scot: What if your campfire is metaphorically and physically big like the ironically topical Burning Man? @Stephen The SecondLife Land Drama's and resultant land-parcel 'Covanent' tweaks and fixes offers a rich ground to observe the 'Privatization of Constitution'. No 'hard data' though. Mark Cuban's Take Your House Public? sets the stage for the Need. Eventually the itch will find its scratch.

By: Scott Annan

Scott Annan — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 02:38:04 +0000

Great article.

2 major obstacles in “modern software”:

1. Getting in the way by providing too many features. provide some context and simple tools that people can operate, then get out of the way.

2. Hierarchy, roles, and permissions. There is no need for a sysadmin at the campfire.

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:12:32 +0000

JP, always on the lookout for “hard data,” I have to invoke what I learned from the practice of journalism that I then applied to my own practices of editing. The rule is a simple (but humbling) one: The author is always the poorest judge of the meaning that his words have conveyed! This is why I have such a rabid conviction that the absence of good old-fashioned editing inevitably devalues the text:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Mff23hgidqmHGqbcv.lfskakEtS6qLVHUEMFUG4-?cq=1&p=233

By: JP Rangaswami

JP Rangaswami — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:21:12 +0000

Not surprisingly, I find your comment fascinating. I love history, yet I find it almost scary to “think about where we are going on the basis of where we have been”. History plays a part in my learning but does not dominate it. In fact I learn most from being a parent and from watching my children.

Similarly, I love language, but I guess my concepts of “straightforward” differ from yours. Possibly because my concept of communication differs from yours. I try and measure my precision not in the words I use but in the meaning I perceive them to have conveyed.

I will continue to learn, more because we are so different than because we are the same.

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:00:32 +0000

Balaji, compared with all those Shirky paragraphs that run the gamut from the trivially obvious to the linguistically muddled (talk about kerfuffle!), I find only trace amounts of Kool-Aid in your few sentences! JP is certainly right in saying that we have only begun this “journey;” but what navigation tools do we have at our disposal? Let me take the extreme position that only two matter:

1. A keen skill for description in straightforward language
2. An equally keen sense of history through which we can think about where we are going on the basis of where we have been

If you can manage the second of those tools, I shall be only too happy to keep driving the first!

By: dan luke

dan luke — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:08:12 +0000

Social networking sites serve a pupose, but they are a poor substitute for acutally meeting someone. Largely they are frivilous, but you nevertheless have tech evangelists promoting them as the solution to some problem. Shirky suggests the campfire has its limitations because we can’t convoke a meeting around it with whomever we choose whenever we wish. He fails to point out the even more severe limitations of online communication and social networking. Communication held therein is often very forgetable and of very little value. This doesn’t have to be the case, but it is for right now.

By: Balaji Sowmyanarayanan

Balaji Sowmyanarayanan — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:13:42 +0000

JP,
The Community you are alluding is slowly emerging towards ‘Republic of You’. Just like the concept of ‘Private Enterprise’, the concept of ‘Private Constitution’ is emerging.

Social software is roughly in the state of evolution point similar to transition that ended the Dark Ages.[Currency transition from Land to Gold, vs our present transition from Scarcity to Plenty]

The learnings from the present Market Crisis 2007 will catalyze/accelerate the privatization of constitution aka ‘Republic of You’?. Are the tools ready for such big time?
Choose your tools wisely!

Interesting times indeed.
PS: Stephen, apologies for drinking too much Kool-aid in advance. It is just rehearsal ok. :)

http://twitter.com/labsji

By: The Equity Kicker » Blog Archive » ‘Groups’ an important concept in enterprise2.0

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 13:29:48 +0000

[...] thought comes from Clay Shirky, FOUR WHOLE YEARS AGO in this piece (thanks to JP for the tipoff in Social Software is Political Science in Executable Form – with a title like that I was always going to read [...]