« Christmas is Over - It's Clobberin' Time! | Main | Winer on Open Source and Campaigns » Aesthetics of Social Networks It's probably premature for me to talk about an aesthetics of social networks, which is a concept that Honoria and I came up with while riffing on ideas for courses or presentations related to social software, and thinking about her dissertation, which is about network art both physical (mail art) and virtual. As a result of that discussion, we've been preparing a panel for SXSW Interactive this March called Aesthetics of Social Networks, and we've been looking at it various ways, including visual aspects (network maps) and the concept of a social aesthetic (harmonious group-forming). We're not completely there, but I was thinking about it this morning while reading zephoria's blog, where she's responding to Cory's rant about social network apps that I mentioned a few days ago. Zephoria sez i'd ask all technologists to consider not only what problems a technology solves, but what new ones could emerge. Start thinking like a writer or an abuser of technology. Imagine how people could misuse a technology to hurt others. Consider who gains and loses power from such technology. It's a fascinating exercise and far more fulfilling than just thinking about who benefits from something. And besides, then you won't always be thinking "but the users shouldn't do THAT with this technology."Joi responds a lot of the consequences of technology are not predictable and emerge as the technology develops and is adopted widely. I think that in addition to trying to have a vision about the negative effects of technology (which I agree is important) and trying to design around the issues, I think that identifying tensions as they arise and providing feedback to the toolbuilders is important. One of the problem of commercial enterprise is that technologists are often forced to sweep these tensions or problems under the carpet for the better good of profits or commercial interests. Also the cost of changing a design or an architecture often makes such change difficult. I think designing systems to assume they will need to be changed is important. This does get difficult as technologies mature. This is why I think the social software / blog space is interesting. We can still change a lot of the basic architecture of this space. So although I agree it is important to call our to technologists to think, I think that the dialog between technologists and people like you and Cory is more important.which is a good point (i.e. it's important to leverage social networks while building technologies, including those we build to support social networks). This got me thinking about the aesthetic approach, because it puts the engineering foo and project management wrangles aside for a moment, so that we can look at the process of technology development with new eyes, and think creatively about the project or app as an aesthetic piece. This kind of thinking (outside the box) would live under Joi's carpet where commercial projects are concerned; if I brought this up while wearing my consultant's hat I'd be shown the door. But we now have a world of noncommercial open source projects that people are doing for various reasons, and one of those reasons might as well be aesthetic, and might lead to innovation emerging from those parts of the brain we seldom bring to bear on project work. jon posted this at 7:21 AM |
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Ah, Jon, but what are the aesthetics of a social network, except for the quality of interactions and the bonds and tensions that result? It's one thing to design a bicycle, another to design a social organization, for which a social network is an intended template.
I'm working with a small team of experts to design a nontangible product whose outcome is completely social, with only a few objective indicators of success or failure. We are using a typical product development/systems engineering process. But the factors involved are uncommon, as are the outcomes. We're defining probably for the first time the type of results we're measuring. "Happiness" of a certain type is one of them. "Unhappiness" would be its reciprocal.
Are these the aesthetics of which you were thinking?
Posted by: Bob Jacobson | December 31, 2003 9:09 PM