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RoundTable 2 - by KKnight
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last edited
by kknight 15 years, 10 months ago
RoundTable 2
by: Kim Knight
TH -
- all computing is social; social artifacts created through socially determined processes
- collaboration / communication / community intertwined with history of computing
- early systems dependent upon sharing
- twitter, myspace, etc. d/n = question of new form; not fundamentally changing the nature of computation, but changing the form
- increase # / frequency of social contacts
- medium of contact changes as well
- opportunity for shared projects
- proliferation of free / open source software tools allow individuals/organizations to create sites/applications for collaboration / communication
- Crabgrass - allows users to create social sites of their own (riseup labs)
- how do you take collaboration and turn it into a constituency?
- how do you takea group working on a project and create an awareness of shared position, etc.
- patientslikeme - people who share medical conditions talking about conditions but also sharing data
- data collection becomes a point of advocacy
- demanding treatment, inclusion in clinical trials, etc.
- fundamental challenges in thinking about soc computing from an advocacy standpoint
- privacy
- participation in Todd's projects often places a participant at risk
- how is participation structured?
- what are the rules of engagement?
- disclaimer: intentionally provocative in order to jumpstart conversation and to overcome the post-lunch stupor
- An Example:
- PK has written an article and in the process of a book-length project about this example
- Internet Bubble - army of well-motivated , well-financed people setting out to (make money?)
- disastrous exercise in social computing
- a market is fundamentally social
- behavioral realities of trading/transactions unknown / ignored
- lack of interest in behavioral realities resulted in a failure to model
- also a failure to harvest "extant social wisdom in the existing systems"
- people were unaware of really clever ways of handling problems
- no place for unknown social wisdom
- reciprocal favor-giving in propane market - unknown and therefore systems built with no place for reciprocity
- all computing is inefficiently / insufficiently social
- How social is social computing, really?
- "Rule #1 - The sociology is MORE important than the technology" (Valids Krebs, Orgnet.com)
- "Social Software is 90% social and 10% software" (Matthew Mahoney, SocialText)
- AYL - re: PK's rules - is this the case? Should it be?
- CP question - where do things like graphics fit in? whole range of "in-between" things that we might call social
- AYL - complicates the binary
- MW - what is the "social" that counts for 90% of the equation?
- why is it assumed that the creation / writing of software isn't also a social dprocess?
- PK - agrees but who is Matthew Mahoney and what is SocialText?
- not researchers but someone trying to earn money saying this
- deploy their tool in a business enterprise setting
- AYL - Valdis Krebs - 3 degrees of separation; activists trying to bringa corrupt landlord to justice; used data mining to expose an entire conspiracy operating in the background; if the social network of the conspiracy were tracked, you found that 3 degrees of separation close the circuit between the conspirators. Ah-ha moment - need to be able to see beyond 1 - 2 degrees of separation; a social issues; technology facilitated what could have been done with enough footwork
- AF - agrees with 90/10 ratio
- wants to turn it around - that 10%, software, still really important
- collective action efforts contingent on core features - communication, coordination, etc.
- software makes those features efficient
- KA - why assign a weight; leapfrog taking place
- software co-opted for social setting; software designed for social settings
- change in ratio as communities change / adapt
- AYL - changing behaviors of Prius drivers b/c instant feedback - mpg competitions; mileage jocks
- LS - software determines ground rules of the community
- tweaks in design of software can completely alter the behavior of the community
- example: discussion on talk pages on Wikipedia: changed the way people interacted, the way they worked together,
- removing the discussion from the collectively authored text shifts the dynamic of the way the software is used and changed the nature of the community; less of a free-for-all
- AYL - are these kinds of consequences predictable?
- LS - sometimes, but only sometimes
- LS - 90/10 true because social software creates a community
- d/n fully realize that Wikipedia was a community in addition to an editorial project
- no real "ah-ha" moment; gradual realization
- collaborative software (as distinct from other kinds of social software) creates a community
- social bookmarking sites as examples of social software w/ a low level of interaction required for interesting / useful results
- aggregation more than collaboration
- NvH - iceberg 90% invisible, 10% visible; people pull social software in the direction they want; not always obvious how the invisible portion affects the visible
- invisible work and articulation work - work people do to make sure things work
- AYL - necessity for inefficiencies - where informal, wisdom-generation happens
- Gene ? - Trapped in the Net
- "being in the bubble" - situational awareness ; if technologies, etc. are misdesigned you cannot have situational awareness
- TH - software to support existing communities vs. nascent communities / build communities
- JE - discussions of community
- ability to not rely on pre-existing homogeneous communities
- heterogeneous and crossing communities
- TH's Chinatown project
- TH - allows immigrants to access services and neighborhood network
- recruited community members / residents
- TH's project need to recruit people already a member of the community
- MoveOn's post-katrina housing database
- based on people's differences
- failure of reliance on set, homogeneous communities during disaster
- build communities, but also take advantage of connecting different community
- hesitates to think it is all about community
- TH - solidarity is the missing key term - disparate communities willing to stand in solidarity
- MoveOn - immediate tactical objectives plus longer term strategy of building constituencies
- AYL - this bears directly on the projects of the social computing group
- strong feedback from office of research - need strong diversity argument needed in the proposal
- we need to show the way that we will cultivate a diverse pipeline
- interestint to think of htis as a social networking / computing issue
- BC - one of the reason that sofrware is only 10% is because there is a lot of good open source software (vs. previous situations)
- AYL - choice between long term careful building of software platforms vs. bottom-up, build it quick, and see what sticks
- AZ - two comments
- designing software - how much power do the designers have to increase / decrease the percentage of social in the equation
- imposes designer's p.o.v.s but does not necessarily represent the community
- McLuhan - how social can the platform be? really only one mode vs. the reality of multi-modal communication
- AYL - connects to JD's comments re: responsibility / power of designers in affecting the field of social computing
- JD agrees; you should think it through and make your best predictions; users will always appropriate and surprise you
- AYL - who gave you the power? Why should you have it? (devil's advocate question)
- JD - IBM's Beehive
- everyone can control exactly how they appear
- eventually put something on everyone's profile page that people did not choose to have there
- banner that indicated an invite to an elite event
- people rejected it / reacted negatively
- vocal uprising of objection which is then responded to, which sometimes generates more protest
- communities are very powerful
- designers can set ground rules, but after that point, you don't have as much control as you might like
- AYL - decision / authority work backwards
- peer review - you have the authority first, allows you to make decisions
- web - you put something up, evaluated after the fact
- unwarranted authority - no one has actually given you the authority; someone ahs to do it; you make the decision and afterwards your authority is evaluated
- JD - people ended up calling for governance after the system was developed
- H.R. is already sort of the governance system
- AYL - also happening in IBM Second Life
- normal social arrangements / cues missing in Second LIfe - Clayton Childress worked on this in pedagogical settings
- RH - is it possible to do a social study of how people are working with technologies to inform better design; or is subversion / repurposing unavoidable?
- NvH - you can never predict
- TH - procedures for doing just that
- TH - in many cases these are not research / pet projects
- designers constrained by revenue models, etc.
- also true in non-profit sector
- LL - the whole conversation about designer authority is dialectic between perfectibility (not gonna happen) and "fixity from above"
- by definition the dialectic is emergent
- some groups will want more self/governance, others will want more loose governance
- no singular solution
- user pushback is not noise; the use is the technology
- can't think of possibilities / way ahead w/o framing it in terms of waht already exists
- also have to realize big hand of the designer is very embedded in what we are talking about here
- CP - resident medievalist!
- determinism and free will - drive to exercise free will is omnipresent
- engineers among us are trying to be determinist
- AYL - right to the heart of social computing
- times that we want to be fully plugged into our social communities
- times we want to be free
RoundTable 2 - by KKnight
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