one of the things we want to do across the lkl social software course/seminar series is to explore and use different kinds of social software. me and yishay started to think about how different types of software are (and can be) used and how the principles or qualities embedded in their design might ’shape’ our use of them – though we are not being technocentric here. we came up with the following concepts that we might try and apply as a way of thinking about the differences between how these appplications are used (the whole time i’m writing about this im worried that i am just using these to produce some kind of convention or stereo type of use) any way, these might or might not prove to be useful but here they are:
the idea of time/pace
interactivity
multimodality
and them in relation to ‘memory space’ the dimensions/concepts of personal/public and transient/permanent
so these might be configured in different ways across the software
we ended up drawing little maps and charts trying to map different kinds of social software in relation to these dimensions – all a bit challenging in the 2D paper and pen environment!
i guess trying in this way to get at the principles that underpin how we decide what goes where when use wiki as opposed to blog….using these concepts as continuums to think about (map ) the applications with – but also to think about how fluid the resources are
ended up starting to think:
wiki = product, very structured but emergent structure, weak relationship to history, high interactive
blog = process narrative, personal voice, dramatic quality
but on reflection – yishay – i think how they are different is the social uses they have come to be used for, which comes to shape what we use them for and how, just as much as the constraints of the thing itself?
