18 June 2010

GOOD AND BAD SOCIAL NETWORKING

A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.

Sigmund Freud

The original social networks were about describing social relations that were not just dyadic or binary. In the world we influence others and they influence us, usually on many levels at the same time. It is not just one on one. Colds, jokes and many other things travel through networks of people. Networks rapidly become complicated, and how do we know how they are organized, and how do we talk about what we see? Social network analysts are excited by the 6 degree thing because it allows to make guesses about what the human networks are like. Good or Bad.

The newer community came from the merger of two ideas: collaborative software and networking. Collaborative software is such things as e-mail, this wiki, IM and so on. This has roots going back to Vaneever Bush’s 1945 paper “The Way We May Think” where he proposed a collaborative system that inspired hyperlinks and the World Wide Web. It was followed up by Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart and there is a long tradition of working towards better collaborative software in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Software that mediated human interaction came to be called “social software” (the term was coined by Eric Drexler, the same person who coined the term “nanotechnology”).

Meanwhile, as women increasingly joined the marketplace in the 70’s and on they realize that they were running into established networks that blocked their entry. They started forming groups to mentor and help each other. This activity came to be called “networking” and by the the 1980’s it was an established business idea. In 1985, for instance, the organization Business Networking International was started, which still exists and is huge. In personal communication, the CEO (Ivan Mischner) said that the US Chamber of Commerce claims to have coined the term “networking.” In any event, the term “networking” meant to actively expand your networks for business purposes.

In the late 90’s some folks got the idea to start businesses that did “networking” using collaborative software. Most of them thought of themselves as “business” or “professional” networking, but Jonathan Abrams wanted to network for friends and he called what people did on his site, Friendster, “social networking.” The term caught on and links a person makes through using MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn, FriendSter and so on came to be called “social networks.” In the abstract these are “social networks” in the first sense, and there have been some papers that explore this, but in the main the older one is talking about networks in general and the newer about networks that revolve around specific Web sites. It was unlikely that Johathan was familiar with the older term.

The social networks of collaborative software are wonderful, exciting technologies. Occasionally someone will comment to me that the older kind of social networks are not as important and somehow overly academic. I would hope that people can realize this is not true at all.

In the 60’s the idea of interdisciplinary research was popular (it is again). At Harvard they started a program called “social relations.” This program took the common aspect of social psychology, economics, sociology: social relations and made that the foreground of study. Many people who are still quite well known were there, Stanely Milgram, Mark Granovetter, Harrison White, Barry Wellman, Ivan Chase, … (heck even BF Skinner was there, but he was in that department) – some were teachers, some students. Some of the ideas they had then and subsequently about how our social world works are still revolutionary. A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.

Sigmund Freud

Nexonta Technologies Inc