May 17th, 2005
Neither social nor technological. Danah Boyd sums up nicely the barrier that seperates academia and technologists with respect to software that supports group-forming aka Social Software. Interesting insights into the politics of terms – microeconomies of power and their deficiencies.
The Significance of “Social Software”:
“[...] I will explicate those advances and unpack their implications both for digital social life and for our shared knowledge project. I will also argue that technological research’s unwillingness to account for the advances, contributions and challenges of social software have significantly limited their own advancements. While social software’s advances must be acknowledged, I will also present some of the limitations of the current approach – namely its inability to fully understand the sociological implications of its advancements. Reflexive failures limit the potential of social software since so much of its significance comes from the interplay between the technology and the use. Herein lies a question of our responsibility as researchers – when should we simply study these emergent technologies and when she we directly involve ourselves with the iteration?
(Via apophenia.)
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