Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness
Inquiry and learning into social networks, organizational network analysis, and the relationships among people and systems in complex organizations and networks.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Perspective with Alacrity

My friend Karl Hakkarainen (who blogs at )pointed me to a wonderful article on Life with Alacrity about the history of social software. It roots the idea of using computers as tools to support individual memory, people-to-people, content-to-content, and people-to-content connection and coordination. From idea to experiment to practice, the language has changed and evolved as real applications have been envisioned and then made real.

When I first skimmed the article, I felt as if my professional life was passing by. I was working with text editing software in 1982 when I attended an ACM SIGOA conference in Portland, where I heard Charles Goldfarb talk about generalized markup. I went back to Digital and designed and created a document markup language and software system that produced technical manuals -- and a hypertext help system. A little later, also at Digital, I met John Whiteside, one of the founders of the ACM special interest group on computer-human interaction, which inspired the SIG on computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW). From there to knowledge management, a renewal in the development of collaboration systems, and on to social software. The language has evolved with times.

Hence, over in Corante, there is a dialogue about the term "social software," its connotations, and alternatives.

I have a large section in my Ark Report (KM and the Social Network, or some such title not yet confirmed) on "social software" -- broadly defined -- and how different tools enable network-building. I have "finished" my draft and am now in that angst-producing time between the writing and publication, during which I come across, or people like my friend Karl send me, new articles and thoughts and ideas that, had I had them a month ago, would have found their way in the fabric of my written thoughts. Grrr.

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patti anklam. How to make networks work.

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