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« It’s not the products we need to standardise, it’s the methods! | Main | Just what is SOA? »
Social Computing and Anti Social Behaviour
I am fascinated by the idea of ‘Social Computing’, a new term that is beginning to gain impetus as the idea that using technology to communicate and share information, or collaborate in new ways is in effect a life skill. I confess to an initial irresponsible reaction of ‘I told you so’ to pay back all those people who told me that being interested in computing led to anti social behaviour, but actually my interest is far wider. It led to the surprising discovery that Peter Drucker, the management guru, made some highly relevant remarks a whole generation back.
Drucker was commenting on the Information Technology, or IT, revolution in discussing the impact from the introduction of the PC and the path of change that it had brought. His point was that the first technology revolution had been printing, and that this had been initially a technology revolution with the ‘printer’ being in control. In time the power had moved to the Publishers, or the providers of information. His direct link was from hardware products to software applications, but he failed to mention two other points. Not sure that the first is totally relevant, but it is a fact that printing did put an awful lot of monks out of work. The second is highly relevant in that in time it made reading and writing into a universal life skill.
Well seems that both points have come true again, i.e. we have cut out the middle layer, for monks read managers, and we have added a new life skill, hence the term ‘social computing’. Why is this different from business computing? Well, for lots of reasons, but to start with the difference between training users to use a specialised computing application and say e-Bay, then there is the funding model, capital or by use, etc. But let’s park all of this to one side for a moment and deal with the bit I really wanted to get to. At the time of the printing revolution there was no such thing as fiction, all handwritten books dealt strictly with recording facts or at least educated treaties.
A few hundred years later fiction had become the largest genre of published works, and categorisation of books by genre was a normal activity to help us understand the motivation of the author, and the way to treat the contents of their book. Fiction is great for entertainment, but not too good to help understand the taxation system and making a tax return, that’s a different genre. So what about the news that there are apparently 22 million Blogs out there, how do you know what is what?
Some are factual reporting for sure, but some are motivated by other factors including malicious comments on products and employers. It’s not too hard to suppose that there are people making a living from being paid to manufacture Blogs that will affect the reputation of a competitor as an example.
Has the law been made clear on the consequences for ‘inaccurate’ Blogs, should there be a categorisation, or a warning; this blog is fictional and any resemblance to a real person, or circumstance, is accidental’. The whole fabric of society is in fact achieved and governed by conventions and rules enacted as ‘social’ behaviour and legal requirements. So does where does Social Computing fit? Is it a convenient title, or the beginning of a new part of society that will need to develop its place in overall society?
BTW a small footnote for those who find the concept of Social Computing interesting. One of the people who got me really interested in social computing is Steve Flinn who is CEO of ManyWorlds Inc., a company that is a leader in developing Web-based technologies that automatically learn by continuously analyzing the behaviours of system users. Steve makes available a really fascinating chart of the path of social computing (download as PDF).
Posted by Andy Mulholland on July 24, 2006 | 
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Comments
# on July 29, 2006 10:39 PM, Martin said:
Andy,
interesting idea - but I wonder if social computing as a concept is being put on too high a pedestal, being given too much importance? In an era of wall to wall "reality" TV aren't we learning to take everything with a pinch of salt?
In terms of blogs needing a warning I think it'll be quite a while before any blog has the same social impact as Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast - and that was 68 years ago. And that particular piece of inaccuracy is now seen as a stroke of genius.
# on July 30, 2006 10:34 PM, andy mulholland said:
i hadn't really consider your point, and its a good one. I guess that people believed that behavoir was truthfull more readily in the past than now. maybe the recommendation by the founder of wikipedia not to believe everything in it was the proof of your point! good comment!!
andy
# on August 17, 2006 12:10 AM, Milé Buurmeijer said:
Hi Andy,
Why categori(s|z)ation? As Martin nicely pointed out the label "blog" evaluates differently then let’s say a “Wiki” entry. Blogs suggest a story or comment like style and value to the reader. So the content itself should trigger the right attributes in the readers mind! Some might evaluate differently when taking into account that you are CTO. Others, like me, are very attracted by the thing you wonder and write about. Remember Jini. I was really into that (went to San Francisco with a car dashboard to show the benefits of Jini) and read later that you where triggered also by the simplicity and power of this dynamic integration technology. Readers will take into account that the blogger wrote something they agree with and therefore tune in more easily on other content he/she posts. Vice versa when relevant blogs pop up when googling, you first examine if you trust the blogger by reading through the other content on his blog. This quickly provides the right attributes, like the author clearly doesn’t know what he is dabbling about or that is sheer profound wisdom shared here.
Another thing is the subject of the blog. IMHO this should be well thought over, because if I spent my time reading something that does not match the subject this really lowers the credits of the blogger. I.e. I mistakenly expected something on the crossing of Skype like presence and LinkedIn like social networking. Do enterprises like Capgemini know the power of LinkedIn and the caveats. Instead of showing resume’s send a LinkedIn profile, which clearly shows your network and the clients willingness to become part of that network. Of course headhunters, like Korn Ferry, already use this service in their operational process. How quick a social tool became embedded into our work and became the IP router / DNS of social networking. Wherever the other moves they remain part of your network. Since I like mobility: LinkedIn makes business contacts wireless => no strings attached to the company they work(ed) for ;-)
An(d)y news on the number of readers of the CTO blogs?
Luckily the comment policy does not limit the length of a comment ;-)
# on August 17, 2006 10:32 AM, andy mulholland said:
What a great post! Introduces some really good points, the fact that evaluation and 'value' can be assesed by who you, (role?) are and exposure of your behavoir, (acceptability of your views?), seems to answer at least one major points. It made me think of e-Bay, similar principle and proven to work at least adequately. Then if you add the comments on LinkedIn it all adds up to a new level of transparency around person and role.
Interestingly this leads to the concluding comment around what we are seeing happening with the CTO Blog. Its a kind of proof of the above as we are finding that we are getting commercial enquiries from people/companies based on the blog. asking why this has happened has identified that they have chosen to search on their project topics through blogs rather than websites. their reasoning is that this locates 'real' involvment and views to compare as opposed to the brochure ware on a web site.
We, my fellow CTOs and I, are deeply fascinated by the way we are seeing Blogging developing!
Any other views on what blogging represents??