Reading through the articles on social software in this weeks readings, I have noticed an interesting theme in the desire and need for individuals to gather in groups based on a common interest or activity. This seems to be a human need, be it on the plains, on the village green or local pub or in cyberspace. In the 1990s and up until recently software was designed for the individual and time and effort was spent on ensuring that the technological aspects functioned to satisfy individual needs. Clay Shirkey seems to have been instrumental in defining social software as now 'treating groups as first class objects in the system.
People need to connect to people and joining groups in cyberspace and Adina Levin suggested that people being social creatures are 'compelled to write blogs and journals to show off and to share and to contribute to wikipedia and open source software projects for the joy of building things with other people.'
However there seem to still be rules to be conformed to when belonging to and interacting in a group; rules of admittance, rules of order and rules for remaining in the group. When designing social software technicians will need to be aware of some basic psychological characteristics of human nature. Clay Shirkey notes that tension can result when individuals go against group goals so when joining any group it might be important to state the 'mission' and reason for being of the group so as to ensure common goals. He makes another interesting point when he says that groups change their behaviour in response to changes in software and this shows that software designers have an enourmous amount of power to control and steer group behaviour.
A user can only do what the system allows him to do in such a way as the system is designed. Kenneth Boulding says 'we make tools and then they shape us'.
However users have the ultimate control in the success of a system on line as they can take it or leave it and the number of users is an indication of the success and user friendliness of the system.
Within large groups, 'conversational clusters' can evolve as being smaller groups of people who are drawn together based on something they have in common and once again this is human nature to want and need to belong to a group even as part of a larger entity.
Steve Boyd says that social software allows us to create new social groupings which result in new social conventions arising which cannot be predicted. We are really on the brink of a new social organisation and it is exciting to be part of this cyber socialisation.
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2 comments:
Hi Jane, I couldn't agree with your comments more. It is interesting that our social instincts are so innate that we bring them us everywhere we go.
Hi Jane,
In your post you mention that there are rules to be conformed to when belonging to and interacting in a group. I had never thought about this much before, but while reading Shirky's article "A Group Is It's Own Worst Enemy", I could really relate to one of the examples. Shirky mentions that when people are at a party in which they are bored, they will not just get up and leave. When someone does eventually decide to be the first person to go, suddenly everyone else does too. This exact situation happened to me just last weekend. I was at a party and wasn't having the best time, but I didn't want to be the first one to leave because I didn't want to be rude. Finally someone got up to leave and myself and three other people decided to go at the same time. It's so funny how groups work like this!
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