Fred Stutzman on Leveraging the Future of Social Technology

A very interesting piece, pointed out by the author, Fred Stutzman, on Leveraging the Future of Social Technology.

Underlying all social technologies are certain fundamental aspects, and I’ve decided to enumerate them as the connection/description/attribution model. Put simply, the structural aspects of social relationships can be represented through connection, description and attribution; all social technologies enable at least one of these things, and better social technologies enable a mix of these. I’ll define the aspects of this model and provide examples.

• Connection: The most fundamental aspect of sociality. How we connect, how we converse, how we establish social relations. Imagine the telegraph, telephone, cellular phone, instant messenger.
• Description: How we enumerate our social relationships. In the real world, we enumerate our relationships through memberships, clubs, and the like. Social networking websites are a key example.
• Attribution: How we understand notions of power and authority in social relationships. A hugely affective part of social relationships; often thought of in terms of economy and social capital. Attribution exists in social systems, particularly in the “karmic” functions of virtual communities. Virtual approximations of real-world attribution are difficult, however, and current implementations do not streamline well with our lives.

The challenge of building social tools is the effortless integration of the underlying social model into the toolset. In email and telephony, the core action is communication. In a social networking website, the core actions are description and communication. In these cases, we see tools that are built on the social model.

Fred is more than a theoretician: his claimID project goes beta this Friday. Mark Hershberger has this to say about that.