Clay Shirky: Social Software is The Experimental Wing of Political Philosophy
Clay Shirky has nailed a manifesto on the door, here at the High Church of Technocracy at ETech. In a nutshell, his thesis is that we have a moral responsibility -- those of us whose purpose is the development of social technologies -- to explore the social contract between the users and owners of online interaction. More importantly, he calls us to a higher goal: to discover the most productive patterns for group self-moderation so that social tools can not only 'work' in a technological sense, but so that we can craft techniques that shape culture into positive channels. He argues that human society, as a whole, needs us to get this right, since we are in essence the experimental wing of political philosophy. His contention is that if we don't get this right, meaning developing a Rosseau-like social contract where the rights of the individual are upheld, then we may be surrendering the future to Hobbesian tyrannies, both online and everywhere else.
I found it particularly funny that Clay used Dave Winer's unilateral conversion of an once open mailing list into a centralized, moderated mailing list (which led to quite a howling by the members of the group) as the prototypical example of freedom devolving into tyranny.
Clay has asked us to become involved in the specification of the pattern language of moderation, which is the necessary precondition for deep understanding of the future social contract as realized in the pervasive social architecture now emerging.
To get involved, check out the wiki, which Clay says has reached the Alan Kay point -- good enough to begin arguing about it -- at http://social.itp.nyu.edu/shirky/wiki.
About a year ago I was chatting to a friend who runs a mailing list I'm on after a particularly strenuous debate and saying "You know, we should set up a wiki to discuss best practices for moderating online debate. There are a lot of people out there who have more or less the same problems." But I've been working on a much larger project for the last year so never did get around to that one. Glad to hear a far more eminent figure has done so, look forward to participating when I finally have a smidgen of free time! I ran a dialup BBS that had a lively and productive discourse for at least 5-6 years of its 10 year history, mostly due to the quality of the participants, but I think the quality of moderation helped as well. Certainly quality of moderation affects quality of participation, and vice versa.
Posted by: Seth Wagoner | March 08, 2006 at 02:42 PM
I'm interested in the conversation about what Clay is doing (arguing?) but I have not yet found the "in" on the wiki space for conversation based on a few questions posed on the wiki (see http://social.itp.nyu.edu/shirky/wiki/?n=Main.TalkAboutPurpose) Where is the discussion ABOUT moderation and pattern languages? It's hard to contribute to a pattern without some clarity of intent and how it might be applied.
Also, there are quite a few assumptions about moderation and tyranny, which confounds the conversation.
I don't disagree at all with the need to understand how technology influences our online interaction. It's what I'm all about. But I wonder if a pattern language can work for this. Are there are too many cultural, personal and group differences that make this a useful intellectual exercise, but not so useful in practice?
Or maybe I'm missing the whole point because I draw a distinction between moderation and facilitation - both which have technical/tool implications.
Very interesting. Where's the conversation happening?
Posted by: Nancy White | March 23, 2006 at 02:30 PM
Nancy - I haven't visited the iste since the conference. Perhaps you should ping Clay directly?
Posted by: Stowe Boyd | March 25, 2006 at 06:46 AM