Category: Tasks

Anderson, C. (2012). The long tail. In M. Mandiberg (Ed.), The social media reader (pp. 137-151). NYU Press. https://archive.org/details/TheSocialMediaReader

– I’ve definitely heard of the long tail before, several times. I’m interested to read this!

– “The tyranny of physical space”–now that’s a phrase and a half! And yet I imagine that’s not just about rent, either. In social computing, the “tyranny” of physical space may be just as applicable. Could we not say the same about this very course? Could we have gotten all of us together in a single classroom? Or is this, to some extent, only possible because we have a way to overcome the limitations of physical space?

– The question about the top ten thousand tracks is fascinating when I think about it. Certainly, we think that only some of those will actually get any regular traction… but they’re the top 10,000 tracks. First, this implies that there are more even further down the list! But second, how does anything get into the “top” section unless it has demand? The correct answer was already hinted at in the question itself, if only we thought about what exactly we were asking.

– This notion of “more expensive to evaluate than to release” is undoubtedly correct. And yet it also irks me, oddly enough! Particularly where AI-generated content threatens to simply submerge us all in tasteless, mass-produced dreck, I want to value what was created by people who wanted to put their craft to work. I’m not entirely against AI work, if it’s been co-produced with a human. Tell me that somebody spent hours on shaping the lyrics to a song and then hours more trying to convince an AI generator to help them produce the music to go with it, and I’m hard-pressed to say it’s dreck! We all have to start somewhere, after all… and the more input a human has had, the more time spent crafting and shaping the result, the more value I think it holds.

I suppose I sit somewhere in an uncomfortable middle. It is absolutely more expensive to evaluate than to release… but I only want to release that which “has value”… but then I am not (and should not be!) the only person whose measure is correct. Where do I sit, then? Am I hoping against hope that the creators themselves understand what has value and what does not? Yet I have seen pieces that their creators would throw away as a failed attempt, a mistake. Would we not value a “failure” produced by a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt? I fear a future drowned by “worthless” and soulless mass-produced content, but aren’t all the alternatives essentially placing somebody in charge as a gatekeeper? I don’t want that either…

– The benefits of owning individual pieces of work are really not touched on here. Namely, the benefits (to the consumer) of paying a single subscription price for the benefits of access… really only last as long as the access does. As the long tail is curtailed, and what used to be available is removed, only those who purchased individual items and transformed them into an open format maintain the benefit of access and can pass that on to others (including when the originals are lost).

– The problem with a recommendation engine is that it works. It’s both a blessing and a curse. It does help people discover things they truly like, and it can drive a lot of additional, valuable commercial activity. But it’s also a curse. Recommendation engines can be tuned for different purposes. Humans are too malleable. The recommendations in a social network have the same purpose as the recommendations on a streaming service–to drive engagement. And we know, now, how this drives the production and consumption of extremist content. This was supposed to be a good thing. I reckon, though, that most thinking people are something like me now. I trust no recommendations from any service; I am immediately suspicious of what they want to sell me, or what viewpoints they want to push. It’s not a voyage of discovery any more.



Lessig, L. (2012). REMIX: How creativity is being strangled by the law. In M. Mandiberg (Ed.), The social media reader (pp. 155-169). NYU Press. https://archive.org/details/TheSocialMediaReader

– Hasn’t the argument always been that the young do not appreciate what came before, and that the “new-fangled” ways will destroy many great things of value? But has there not always been a seed of truth in every old wives’ tale?

– If we agree that writing is “an extraordinarily democratic activity,” and argue that everyone should have the capacity to write… isn’t it appalling, to a large degree, that people have forgotten how to write? We are not only forgetting how to write, we are forgetting how to think. My view on this is obviously biased by a life spent in tech support of some form or another, but truly, what amount of thought is required to watch some of the absolute drivel posted to social media? Zero. How many could actually argue a point using anything more than “vibes,” anything based in actual, hard, recognized fact? Could it not be that the great equalizing force of technology, by allowing everyone to become a creator with less and less effort than ever before, is also equalizing all of us down towards zero? We are not climbing to greater heights; we are sinking to lower depths.

– Yet it would be foolish to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It’s also true that the equalizing force of technology has allowed more creation. And it would be ridiculous for me to try and stand as some arbiter of what is and is not “worthwhile.” That’s not how this works, at all. Is it not true that whatever passes for culture is somewhat unique to each generation? Is there anything in my fears that has not been echoed by every generation from time out of mind? And yet that’s not enough to quiet my fears, not completely. I do think that dangers remain ahead of the human race that somebody needs to look out for. Who knows if I can see them, or if I can call an alarm even if I do… but somebody has to try.

– Back on the actual topic of copyright law, I agree that copyright is an awfully blunt tool for the digital age. Everything is, indeed, a copy. Even things like Bitcoin are copies of items–a set of zeros and ones that are replicated between distributed ledgers. The “item” is an intangible, and a copy of it exists in every ledger. And the war against copying has produced no real winners, only losers (in the sense of loss) and losers (in the sense of corporations and people who suck).

– It’s fascinating that Lessig’s careful argument (most of which I agree with, as far as adjusting the technical application of the law to maintain the original purpose of encouraging creativity) eventually winds up at the burning question I instinctively identify in modern practice: when the incentives of commerce override the incentives of altruism (as with the recommendation engine)… it’s building businesses on our collective backs. Is that a right state of affairs? Surely it cannot be.

– And with all the benefits of hindsight, I’m not sure I see the Creative Commons licensing as the solution that Lessig presents it to be. Or rather… it’s a very narrow solution to a very narrowly-defined problem. A component of a larger solution, with much greater system-wide problems demanding a more integrated overall set of solutions.



Doctorow, C. (2023). The ‘enshittification’ of TikTok. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

– It’s strange to me that “enshittification” was only coined in late 2022 and publicized in early 2023. I would have said it was coined back in the late 2010’s, possibly 2017 or thereabouts. What a funny thing memory is.

– The description of the “enshittification” lifecycle is accurate, as we all know too well. This is where the promise of the early Web was lost. Can we say that this long game of locking people into place before turning the screws was always the end goal? Probably not! I’m sure there were services that started with the best of intentions, before being sold for money and then turned into a cold-hearted pure-business operation intended to suck the lifeblood from its customers. If anything, I see many, many, many warnings of what happens to the best of intentions when greed is allowed to be the driving force of society.

– My focus on software diversity generally has the effect of trying to prevent the mutual lock-in effect of critical mass. If platforms never have “enough” users to feel confident in trying to lock them in, then the progression into mistreatment of the users can be forestalled. And if it does proceed, then enough people remain outside the bubble to be able to find alternatives. To some extent, if the platforms will play shell games with us, then a rational response is to play a shell game in return, always shifting platforms and never trusting any one central provider. (Things like encryption and decentralization come into play here, allowing users to ensure a central point can neither fully control nor use their content.)

– And once again, what’s the primary way these platforms are trapping people and then converting them into “monetized” products? The recommendation engine. That’s becoming a theme I did not expect for this week…

– Let’s say we’ve identified the core issue here, which is that the motivations to make money off people and the motivation to connect people (and allow them to communicate freely without gatekeepers) are incompatible with each other on a fundamental level. I see two major problems with Doctorow’s suggestions. On creating a “right to end-to-end,” it is clear that at least one of the major US political parties is fully captured by corporate interests. They will not do what is best for the consumer. As long as Americans continue to put anti-consumer interests in power, American law will be written to block this end-to-end principle, not enforce it. I do not see the rest of the world being able to buck this trend successfully, unless the entirety of the rest of the world unites in agreement.

On the second point, Doctorow suggests that policymakers should focus on the right to freedom of exit–to leave a platform and yet stay connected to the community, taking your data with you. This I see as less feasible. Taking your data with you, yes, that should be a given. But I don’t see it being correct to enforce that a platform should be required to allow you to leave and still use their services anyway. Communities are more than a place, and yet the place where they gather is often inherently as much a part of the community “scene” as the people are. If a community leaves a platform and reconvenes elsewhere, all well and good! But if the community remains on a platform and is not willing to offer alternative non-platform methods of access, then I would think that is part of the choice in leaving the service.



Communities of practice
Most of my reflections in this topic will be explicitly linked to my experiences with the geospatial game Ingress. As a brief introductory background, game players belong to one of two “factions.” The goal for each faction is to essentially “capture” large swathes of territory, with higher scores for more densely populated areas. Any three “portals” may be “linked” in order to form a “field” which captures the territory enclosed within those links. Links may not cross each other, and no new links can be formed inside an area which is already “captured.” Players from the opposing faction may then “attack” portals; “destroying” a portal will also destroy all links to and from the target portal, causing any previously-established fields to collapse.

Given these constraints, players must work together in order to create truly large fields to capture an area. As an example, one particularly dense set of fields I coordinated stretched from Powell River, BC, to Vernon, BC, to Arlington, WA. During one of these operations, many teams of players must be dispatched to destroy links which would block the desired field boundaries, and there is a risk of opposing players detecting the path and creating more links in real time to prevent any field from being established. Operational security must be fairly tight, both to prevent information leaks to the opposing faction, and to prevent infiltration by opposing faction supporters acting as “moles” within the team. For particularly remote portals, satellite connections or long-range directional cellular antennas and signal amplifiers may be necessary. All players involved in an operation are usually communicating in real time with one or more “operators” who monitor the game map and direct the various teams to their next objectives as the game map changes, with various tools being used for voice communication and real-time location monitoring.

I played Ingress rather heavily for roughly four years, from 2014-2018. In my time as a player, I worked with a faction community in the Greater Vancouver area, but also communities along the West Coast and particularly in Washington state and elsewhere in BC. I also served as an operator for several “anomalies” (periodic official events held in various cities, including Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver).

Given the highly technical nature of some of this game play, the gaming community really became a good example of a community of practice–explicit knowledge was given by the game itself, but the tacit knowledge of precisely how to apply that knowledge effectively was very much a community-taught skill. Almost all players who connected with the community found themselves spending more time on it because of the complexity and breadth of skills that could be applied. Operators had to be good at integrating real-time data, understanding patterns of movement on the ground, and predicting the opposing faction’s counter-strategy. Recharge room captains had to be good with coordinating people to transfer portal keys from remote locations, then convincing other players to show up to the recharge room and help out. Players in the urban anomaly zones could be relatively less skilled, simply attacking or defending as their operators gave them commands to implement the faction’s community-determined strategy.

None of this was determined by the game itself. Players came together to form communities, and these communities organized themselves as they saw fit, elevating players to various roles as they proved capable and reliable. As players continue to further prove themselves, their reputation grows among their faction and on the opposing faction. This is particularly notable as an anti-cheating measure. A player who has never been seen before, taking actions on an incredibly remote portal, will trigger complaints of cheating via bots or similar measures. Conversely, a player who has an established reputation of having a satellite connection, a history of appearing at remote portals, and the weight of photos and testimony of other players having witnessed their work in-person will usually not trigger accusations of cheating (though the opposing faction will still complain mightily about their actions!).

Community norms are also established. A portal must have eight “resonators” attached in order to be able to form links, and links cannot be maintained if the number of resonators falls below two. Therefore, a single remote portal with only a few resonators attached cannot be used to create links. The presence of a portal in such a configuration usually indicates that somebody is attempting to achieve an in-game medal for having maintained control of a single portal for a certain amount of time. It may be customary to simply “ping” the portal with a couple of weapons blasts to alert the other player to one’s presence… and then leave it alone, as an indication of their secret being discovered, but without voiding the other player’s progress towards their goal. Destroying a portal in this configuration serves no purpose for the faction as a whole, since it cannot be used against the team; destroying it only serves to block individual progress towards individual goals. (It is heartbreaking to have spent months working towards a goal, only for an opposing player to deliberately destroy all progress on day 179 of 180, for no reason but sheer spite.)

All seven of Wenger’s actions for cultivating a community of practice were found in this community:
1. Design the community to evolve naturally: Communities were at no time mandated by the game! Many communities organized themselves on Slack or GroupMe. (My local community used Slack.) Communities would organize activities as the interest of their members dictated, so this naturally changed over time.

2. Create opportunities for open dialog within and with outside perspectives: The entire game had only two factions. Within a single faction, then, you would find players from other communities spanning the globe. An anomaly within Vancouver, BC might be supported by recharge rooms across North America and utilize operators from Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia. The strategies employed by European operators would differ greatly from those employed in North America, but this allowed best practices to evolve and adapt to changing practices on the opposing faction, with all communities continually learning from what the others discovered.

3. Welcome and allow different levels of participation: As I outlined above, players are encouraged to contribute in different ways according to their interests, abilities, location, and desired level of interaction.

4. Develop both public and private community spaces: Slack allows for the creation of public, browsable channels, as well as private, non-browsable channels. Public channels were typically used for lower-security coordination of publicized events, while private channels were utilized for various operations, organized in such a way that compromise of a single operation would not necessarily compromise every operation in progress.

5. Focus on the value of the community: General public channels offered a way for players to celebrate their achievements, including public recognition for players participating in various events and operations. Live events also provided a way for players to socialize and invite new players into the community, often by explaining the positive benefits and fun they had in their own personal experiences.

6. Combine familiarity and excitement: Every operation or anomaly offered the familiarity of the same basic gameplay, but in a coordinated environment very different from solo play. The strategies would always be changing as the two factions developed new measures and counter-measures, making these large events unpredictable and exciting, even as the basic gameplay remained the same.

7. Find and nurture a regular rhythm for the community: Regular events such as a general meetup on the first Saturday of every month, open to players from both factions, and social events in regular locations and times helped establish a general rhythm for the community to participate as desired and on a predictable schedule.



Dunbar, R. (2018, August 9). Why drink is the secret to humanity’s success. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/c5ce0834-9a64-11e8-9702-5946bae86e6d

– Fascinating little side detour. It’s an intriguing little addition to Dunbar’s number, that 40% of our time is spent with 5 close people, and another 20% with the next 10 closest. A full 60% of our time lavished on 15 people. It’s not like I’ve done a study on myself in this context, but… it seems to track.

Right, so my task for this week is to read some papers and informal articles, take notes on my thoughts and reactions, and then answer some questions (at length!). Let’s jump straight in, shall we?

Paper #1
Go, E., & You, K. H. (2016). But not all social media are the same: Analyzing organizations’ social media usage patterns. Telematics and Informatics, 33(1), 176–186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2015.06.016

– Right off the bat, we’ve got six major “types” of social media applications listed (as referenced from Kaplan and Haenlein): blogs, collaborative projects, social networking sites, content communities, virtual social worlds, and virtual game worlds. The last two I find quite interesting to see listed as such, because I don’t see a sharp split between a virtual social world like Second Life and a virtual game world such as Wizard101 or World of Warcraft. The main difference I see is in whether there’s an overarching “quest” or plotline to be followed. If you ignore the “game” elements of a typical open-world MMORPG, it’s not dissimilar to an open-world virtual setting like Second Life or (I imagine) VR Chat. Even in those, you can import some game-themed elements. I think these two have blended together more now than they used to.

– I’m also amused that blogs, Wikipedia pages, and content-sharing sites (such as YouTube) are noted to be “often regarded as facilitating one-way asymmetrical communication, given they do not allow high levels of feedback or back-and-forth exchanges with their publics.” Anybody who was following my LiveJournal between 2004-2014 or so knows very well that the conversation was most assuredly two-way! Wikipedia articles are certainly one-way, because it’s not a platform for individual conversation–it’s intended to be an encyclopedia. But Wikipedia has always had talk pages with quite a bit of back-and-forth, much as YouTube comments will also often have the original poster responding to what others have to say.

– Corporate “blogs,” on the other hand, are often less about two-way conversation and more about one-way announcements in a less formal fashion than a full-fledged press release. This I can agree with. But that’s a limitation of usage, not a limitation of design.

– I generally want businesses to stay firmly out of my virtual worlds, whether gaming or social! But I can’t deny that some people might specifically want some company-branded virtual items to complete a “look” or self-presentational style, and I suppose there should be room for that. Preferably something that makes them available, but not forcibly shoved into everybody’s face as yet another “marketing opportunity.”

– It doesn’t surprise me that non-profits use social networking to a high degree. Non-profits often rely on volunteer work, and they are by definition not in their line of business in order to make a profit. These organizations survive on being able to engage people in conversation and action; social networking is a better fit for this need than most of the other application types covered in this paper.


Paper #2
Parikh, R. (2002). Social software. Synthese, 132(3), 187–211. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020391420768

– I’ve only just read two sentences into the abstract, and this is already a paper after my own heart! “Social procedures” described as “social software”! It’s like it’s made for those of us that everybody refers to as “walking computers.”

– Not sure about “implicature,” though. There are times when I am more vague than I could be. Using one of these examples, if I know the precise location of a person being sought, I may instead say they are “in the south of France” because I do not have permission to reveal their exact whereabouts to the seeker, and do not believe the seeker of this information to have already gained permission to this information. It is an assumption that I provide as much information as I have. (I wonder if this will be touched on later in the paper… aha, it’s in a footnote at the very end!)

– It occurs to me that, while both the Machiavellian and honest algorithms may have the same result, there are other ramifications. (In the example given, there was a gambit payment of $10 to incentivize the horse owners to go faster, when the actual reward was $100 for the slowest result. Conversely, by switching the riders, each was incentivized to make the other owner’s horse go faster.) The desired results are the same in both cases–a fast race and a payout for the owner of the slower horse–but there are results beyond this. The Machiavellian algorithm has achieved the desired result only when the scope is narrowed to the result of the game, but it has other effects such as increased suspicion of cheating, reduced trust from game participants, etc. Over time, the use of these algorithms will start to corrupt and degrade the reliability of all social algorithms. This is alluded to when Parikh mentions a more “stable” result from the honest algorithm, but the matter goes beyond just stability of the single result–really, it affects the stability and reliability of the entire framework over time.


Paper #3
Dron, J., & Anderson, T. (2014). On the nature and value of social software for learning. In Teaching crowds: Learning and social media (pp. 3–34). Athabasca University Press. https://read.aupress.ca/read/teaching-crowds/section/494844f9-0b73-4edc-b974-b054ec957e3b

– In my mind, there’s a difference between learning from people, versus learning with people. And in my experience, I enjoy learning from people; interacting with people gives all involved an opportunity to learn. But when it comes to learning with people–namely, a group of individuals all attempting to learn the same specified material–I must confess that I find this much more of a struggle. Frequently, I find it easier to learn the material on my own or directly from an expert, and then turn around to share the processed knowledge with my fellow learners.

– I suppose I should also place this statement in context with learning culture with people. As a member of a group, it’s relatively easy to be instructed on cultural procedures–the “do’s and don’ts” expected in a specific time and place. But so many will learn that only by rote, and never connect the dots to understand the reasons encoded into these commands and restrictions. Here again is where I divide between learning procedures from people (easy, even as a member of a group of fellow learners) and learning to understand the reasons (which I feel I do better either alone or directly from an expert).

– Put another way, one-to-one and one-to-many communications are feasible for me. If I speak to one or receive from one, that is a small, singular set, and I can handle that. If I, as a member of a group, am still receiving from one, it’s still a small, singular set. If I am broadcasting from myself to many others, there are techniques and habits I can use to limit and sequence / serialize the responses, keeping the total number of simultaneous communication streams low in number and within my grasp. Many-to-many communications are my weak point–simultaneously accepting and handling many communications inbound and outbound. That is what too easily overwhelms me.

– But then, Wikipedia is the perfect example of a many-to-many “communication” that works for me, isn’t it? Many people collectively contribute to that, but I experience it as a single unified communication stream and therefore it is no longer overwhelming to me in the way that experiencing 20 simultaneous separate conversations would be.


Paper #4
Messinger, P. R., Stroulia, E., Lyons, K., Bone, M., Niu, R. H., Smirnov, K., & Perelgut, S. (2009). Virtual worlds — past, present, and future: New directions in social computing. Decision Support Systems, 47(3), 204–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2009.02.014

– While the authors do acknowledge “thematic and fantasy role-playing” as a dimension of “content allure,” I’m not sure they fully appreciate just how significant a driver that is in the adoption and popularity of virtual worlds. Yes, this is bound up into the electronic games which gave birth to the virtual worlds appearing today, but I would posit that there would be little appetite to simply duplicate the real world into an online one without modifications. The urge to play a role, to not only tell but become part of the story, is a human impulse as old as time itself. Concomitant with that is the ability to perceive somebody as more than they are–to see someone as not just the person, but as the character they play. This has a natural effect of wanting to see our mere imagined perceptions given form, and I would therefore speculate that this would create a significant driving force which would push humanity to develop the capacity for virtual worlds anyway. Electronic gaming and online social networking certainly led the way to the virtual worlds we see today, but I do not ultimately see them as the creating forces behind the rise of virtual worlds–merely the proximate precursors.

– If 57% of people have purchased a product in Second Life, but only 6% have purchased something IRL because of seeing it in SL, maybe the potential of these crossovers is yet to be realized as the authors suggest… or maybe there are other factors that are significantly complicating this kind of jump. Maybe somebody who buys a Nissan from an eight-story vending machine in SL simply isn’t very likely (on average) to have the funds or interest to go to their local Nissan dealership and purchase a less customizable version IRL. Or maybe the RL version just isn’t quite as satisfying, or it comes with additional maintenance costs. (This dovetails with the later reported results that SL residents consider their SL activities to be more risk-taking than IRL.)

– “[E]vidence for a clear divide between people who spend real-life money in order to acquire Linden Dollars … and people who
don’t”: The term for those who spend RL money for online currency or objects is “whales.” To my understanding, this largely comes from the fact that these people are the trophies for online games and services, because they will be the biggest drivers of profit and monetization. I believe some online denizens dislike the whales, specifically because games and services will often cater to those who spend the most and fail to implement features which make the experience better for those who do not spend (or spend very little). Both the service’s prioritization of the whales, and the minnows’ dislike of the whales, make rational sense given these facts… but I still feel it’s a rather unfortunate outcome in many ways.

– As far as this finding goes about moderately-involved shoppers finding attractive-looking avatars more compelling, while highly-involved shoppers finding expert-looking avatars more compelling… I dare say this probably is also true offline in the real world! Those who are deeply involved in assessment and evaluation of a product are less likely to be distracted by attractiveness, whereas credibility and expertise is of more immediate use to the tasks at hand. Those who are less deeply involved will find the credibility and expertise less compelling, because that’s not currently their concern, leading to some degree of reversion to the mean in seeking general attractiveness. So I would theorize, anyway!


Informal Read #1
https://julianhopkins.com/how-to-define-social-media-an-academic-summary/

– I’m of two minds on these definitions of “social media.” On the one hand, it’s clearly useful to differentiate sites and service by available features and functionality. On the other hand, it’s very true that these are differences in the mediating platforms which then affect the social media and conduct carried out via those platforms. So is “social media” really best left as a descriptor of the content itself? And yet we still need to devote a lot of focus to the mediators of this interaction, because those act as unavoidable constraints which will force interactions to adapt to the limitations of the system.

– By Ellison and Boyd’s definition of a social networking site, Steam is clearly included! And yet I imagine few people would think to identify Steam as a “social networking site,” largely because it’s more often identified as a “gaming site” or “gaming service.” And yet, perhaps the term which encompasses both of these might be “gaming community.” Yes, clearly the main purpose of this service revolves around gaming… but it’s designed in such a way as to allow community connections to form via a social network, too.


Informal Read #2
https://www.lifewithalacrity.com/article/tracing-the-evolution-of-social-software/

– Wikipedia is Vannevar Bush’s “wholly new form of encyclopedia.” Unbelievably fascinating to see this being discussed in 1945!

– Licklider is clearly experienced in group dynamics! And I don’t think those have significantly changed from then into the present day. Effectively applying any new technology requires understanding and (to a degree) manipulating those who will use it, to best position everybody to achieve am optimal result. (I use “manipulate” here in the sense of carefully nudging and shifting people into voluntarily doing what is needed in the way that is needed. Aligning their motivations with your own, essentially.)

– CSCW feels far more focused on “work” than does the phrase “social computing.” Many of the principles might be the same, and I would bet that a lot of the collaborative effort in gaming or social communities, put forward towards a common goal, fits the definition of “work,” strictly defined. But the emphasis is different, because CSCW doesn’t highlight the social aspect of the cooperation or collaboration that is the focus.


Informal Read #3
https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2005/11/03/what_is_social.html

– Bang to rights, this is. Software is, broadly speaking, the optional, flexible programming which allows a machine to operate. (In “wetware” terms, this might be conscious thought, as opposed to the built-in reflexes and autonomic responses that could be considered analogous to firmware.) Social software, then, could either be the “software” (culture, norms, group dynamics) enabling social connection and interaction offline, the computing software enabling the same in an online environment, or a combined reference to the whole smash.

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Leading questions:
1. What is the difference between a blog and a wiki, and why do we need both?

Broadly speaking, I would say that a blog is generally written by one (or few) writer(s) with a single overarching viewpoint, theme, or purpose. Hyperlinks exist, but the emphasis is to present a coherent view of a single topic or set of information in a mostly self-contained fashion.

A wiki is cooperatively generated by several or many writers, all of whom contribute what they can, and is usually intensively hyperlinked to other concepts. There can be many viewpoints expressed within several articles or even a single article, and the emphasis is on allowing people to follow their own path through the information available as provided by many different contributors.

I would say that we need both of these because they fulfill different needs. If I want to know a single person’s point of view, or I want to focus on gathering information on a single topic without distraction, a blog is likely more useful to me than a wiki. Conversely, if I am on a journey of exploration and want to be able to branch off in many different directions as the search leads me, a wiki is the far better choice. Wikis tend to find a degree of reliability in being edited by many voices–low-quality signals with incorrect information can be “drowned out” by many people editing the page and providing corrected information instead. The reverse is also true; if there are few subject-matter experts, then a single authoritative blog may be able to provide more useful data than a page full of unsubstantiated guesses, speculation, and assumptions.


2. Is there such a thing as anti-social software?

Instinctively, my answer is an immediate “Yes!” If we take social software to be software which exists to facilitate communication and social interaction, then anti-social software exists to stop communication and inhibit social interaction. Anything which restricts or censors information flow meets this definition.

I would note that, in the same way that social software need not be intended to promote communication and social interaction, anti-social software need not be intended for an anti-social purpose. Web filters in corporate environments are certainly there to restrict external communication and reduce the “distractions” of outside socialization, but we would tend to view this as an allowable focus on workplace-appropriate activities and communication, more than we would view it as simply being anti-social. (Though it would chafe me nonetheless.)


3. Is ChatGPT social software?

I would not view ChatGPT as social software. True, it derives its value from the collective output of many other people, but there is nothing that ChatGPT does which is not contained in its training data. It does not depend on the people who use it now, after training. Further, it does not in of itself facilitate communication between different users, and there is some evidence that heavy users of ChatGPT (and similar services) can actually find this interaction more satisfying and more rewarding than actual social interaction.

The more these generative AI services are tuned to increase user interaction, the more addictive and anti-social they will become, as humans find true social interaction unable to deliver the same kind of “hit” as interacting with a software service that is only distilling the creative output of millions into a tokenized, regurgitated facsimile of interaction.

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So how would I define social software? I suppose I already took a stab at this above in my notes on the third informal reading I did, but let’s see if I can’t try to make this slightly more formalized.

Social software is:
a. the collective, contextual set of standards, protocols, and processes used to enable communication or interaction between two or more people, and
b. computing software which promotes and facilitates meaningful communication or interaction between two or more people.

I distinguish between the “software” which allows us to interact offline in any capacity, versus the software which allows us to interact online in a meaningful capacity. Even if we interact on only the most cursory basis offline, that’s still, broadly, a “social” interaction, however limited. In an online environment, however, if I play a game where I am shooting other players and there is neither commentary nor other interaction before or after, there is no real difference between “interacting” with real players versus NPCs. For this reason, I include a somewhat higher bar of “meaningful” communication or interaction in an online environment.

I’m not sure how I would classify types of social software in the second sense of my proposed definition. Intended purpose is one classification system that comes to mind, but the ways in which we use software rarely follows the creator’s exact intentions! Classification by usage is equally flawed, because how I use a piece of software may not be how you use that software. Perhaps I would attempt to classify this by… presence. By which I mean the ability for a user to make themselves “present” in a perceivable manner by others.

Low-presence types of software would include things such as blogs, wikis, and really anything with a simple text chat system! We’re restricted to text communication in these types of software; however expressive we may be, we must rely on the imagination of the reader to “perceive” our tone of voice, our facial expression, our overall comportment.

Medium-presence types of software move into the realm of “multimedia”: this includes the use of pictorial, audio, and video media. A video-conferencing system fits this description aptly, but so do most modern instant-messaging services and “social networking” sites–these all have the capability to switch into a medium-presence mode of communication by opening a video call, or by including images in a post, or sending a voice message. Text may still be the predominant mode of communication, but we are no longer restricted to text only.

High-presence types of software include virtual worlds and virtual reality, where we do not just have multimedia at our command, but entire avatars with which we can express ourselves. Again, this may include text as a main method of communication (particularly for more complex communication), but few people would restrict themselves to text alone when they can express themselves via movement of their avatar–whether this is as simple as looking at people to convey attention, or performing emotive gestures for self-expression. Software in this category would include MMORPGs, VR Chat, Second Life, and other “virtual worlds” where users are given avatars that can interact with others in real-time.

Obviously, this is a working definition and subject to adaptation and modification as time progresses… but I think that’s an operative classification I’m satisfied with, for the time being…