A good resource and the best outlet for your own views on Social Technology is the Social Technology Wiki.
Social Technology Wiki
May 21, 2009various blogs, interrelated in complex ways
May 21, 2009I now have a variety of blogs, more than I can really handle — 6 altogether now, with 2 more to come as soon at my two Elgg Social Networks get off the ground.
The key blog is at http://www.SocialTechnology.ca/wordpress — a wordpress blogg hosted on my own Social Technology website. It deals with all aspects of Social Technology.
A secondary blog is at
http://differentviews.SocialTechnology.ca/wpblog — another wordpress blog, hosted on a subdomain of that site. It deals with a variety of exotic and
unorthodox topics, which could cost me all credibility if posted on the main site. The Different Views site does cover subjects I have an interest in, though my viewpoint is conservative, skeptical and orthodox, in general. I promise a sympathetic presentation of all the other views.
Earlier blogs at the blogger.com site, blogspot.com include:
http://www.technologicalfantasies.blogspot.com/“
TechnologicalFantasies, devoted to future stuff, new ideas, things that might be invented or might happen
http://sex-politics-religion.blogspot.com/” Sex-Politics-Religion, a blog about these important topics, which I have been told should never be mentioned in polite conversation. Alright that advice does seem a bit dated, but many people are still told not to bring up these subjects
around the dinner table.
http://findcompatibles.blogspot.com/ Find Compatibles, a blog about the key problem for any genuine solution in Social Technology
http://loseallcredibility.blogspot.com/ Lose All Credibility, a blog about the same exotic and unorthodox topics which could cost anyone all credibility, more or less the same ones as
http://differentviews.SocialTechnology.ca/wpblog
http://practicalimmortality.blogspot.com Practical Immortality, another blog devoted to an exotic and unorthodox topic, which is also a technological fantasy.
Getting some terminologies straight
May 5, 2009This will help me, if nobody else. First, social technology should be an academic discipline, like psychology or sociology. That is how the “-ology” suffix works. But it is alright to talk about how the world is being changed through social technology — meaning applied social technology, just as it is (was?) correct to say that the world is being changed through psychology — meaning applied psychology.
A technologist of any kind is someone taught the academic discipline, to be a teacher and researcher in that field of technology, but a technician of any kind is someone who applies what a technologist teaches. A social technologist studies and teaches social technology, while we may call people who do the actual work social technicians. That is NOT the same thing as being a “social engineer”. The term social engineering has become pejorative because it is what totalitarian countries did. As well as being taught by social technologists, social technicians may be taught by other social technicians, just as student physicians are taught practical applications by other physicians in addition to whatever theoretical studies they had in medical school.
The social status of a technologist, technician, and engineer may vary. A fully trained physician is a person of high status, more so than the physiologist responsible for part of his or her training. An engineer is ordinarily a person of more status than a technician, but that is not necessarily so when there is something called an engine to be operated. If it breaks a technician will need to be called in to fix it. That technician will normally be able to operate the device too, but is above such a task. As for social engineering, enough said. Someday the term may gain respectability again, but that will probably be a while. Is there any need of it?
Social technicians may work quite visibly when they develop what the Wikipedia calls Social software (social procedure) or more behind the scenes when they develop what the Wikipedia calls Social software (computer software). They may also develop Social hardware, like the advanced descendents of cellphones, which are effectively hardware, despite the rather large amount of software hidden within them.
A social utility (like Facebook) is something like the public water system or the electrical network, or even the railroads, all are utilities, large scale service providers. But any social utility must have social technicians engaged in the analysis, design and implementation of its component software. It may also have social technologists to study and guide the technicians.
People very often use the term “Social Technology” to refer to Facebook. Linguists and lexicographers exist to report public usage, so that way of using the term cannot actually be called wrong. It is in fact consistent with the use of technology to describe steam engines and electric generators, but that way of speaking tends to break down useful analogies. An interesting term is “invention” to which we can add the term “social” if we want. The process of invention something involves reseach, and so is indeed the study of something, which can be called technology. But we use the term invention to describe the actual product itself, the thing invented. Similarly we loosely use the term technology to refer to the result of technological research — part of the academic discipline of technology.
All this terminological stuff is not as important as I have made it out to be, and indeed I have used the expression in ways I don’t actually agree with for many years. But this kind of discussion helps me keep things straight in my own mind. I think of myself as a social technologist, a researcher, not a social technician, though I do try, sometimes, to do the technical work myself. But I would never describe myself as a technology. I have worked as an analyst, not as an analysis, and I am somewhat of an inventor, not an invention (though we all invent ourselves in our own minds).
dpw
Social Technology Wiki
April 26, 2009There is a new Social Technology Wiki available now on the Social Technology site.
suggested: browse to web page while drafting post, instead of typing in URL
April 22, 2009You are surely familiar with picture uploading things which have a browse button, letting you browse your harddrive to find a picture, then when you press open, will fetch the picture and use it. That is what I would like for links. I would like to be able to press some button, which would bring up a browser window, so I could use it to find the web page I want, then would automatically enter the URL of that page as a link into my post (on window closure, I suppose). I don’t want to have to type in URLs any more, I want to browse to them and click.
dpw
facebook group
January 6, 2009mathematic nature of problem and solution
January 6, 2009I cannot emphasize too much the need for a mathematical treatment of the problem. It is not a difficult one, only getting the data is difficult. In essence we need to turn question and answer personality and other profiles into numerical profiles which can be processed in rather simple ways. Some are slow running algorithms, but not difficult ones. I could implement much of this myself and have even done some of it. The key thing is to get other people interested, to get a bit of help, especially with collection of data from forms published on the web. I hope someone will agree to help.
dpw
web page about fictional system
June 2, 2008I now have a substantial collection of web pages, though few have much content on them. One new one which relates to this finding compatibles blog and its associated web page is at
http://FindCompatibles.awardspace.com/SystemByBeth.html
which should also be available at
http://dougwilson.rack111.com/SystemByBeth.html
in case the other link is down.
dpw
de-invention of adolescence
May 28, 2008I want to make some remarks on a controversiaal subject. I do this because I want to post fragments of a novel in which remarkable behaviour is seen and tolerated. In this book quite young teenagers have sex with one another. This is not a case of adults abusing children, not at all, it is young people having sex with other young people of approximately the same age. The idea horrifies many adults, but I don’t think it should.
What is adolesence and why is it so horrible, both for the kids and their parents? Why are the teenage years so bad for everyone, the teenagers and the adults who come in contact with them, parents and teenagers.
Fundamentally, the answer is that for almost all of the million years over which human beings evolved there was no adolesence. A soon as people were old enough for sex, they did it. Even for the last 100, 000 years that our own species of human being existed, adolescence was unknown. It did not become invented until the neolithic period when agriculture was invented, when parents needed to keep their children around as unpaid labour. Sexual behaviour interfered with that so it was strongly discouraged. Later, much later, education became important, and sexual activity interfered with that, too. So to this day people physically capable of sex are not allowed to do it.
It has been true that sexual feelings and activity interferes with work and education, but why is this? I believe it is because of the extreme emotional states it induces. Sexual behaviour interferes with the work and education of adults as well, but the feelings are not so strong and adults are able to control them better.
But all the emotional turmoil ultimately stems from one thing. People have an urgent need for sex, their bodies insist on it. But it is almost impossible to find compatible partners, either for emotional relationships or for sexual relationships. People who are comfortable, happy, regularly relieved of their sexual pressures with the most compatible of people will not suffer the emotional turmoils we so often see.
If that can be the case, if it always very easy to find compatible sex partners, and society permits it, then there can be no adolescence as we know it. The young people will never experience sexual frustration and the
strong emotions of love and desire will be reciprocated, leaving nobody out in the cold.
In this way, through reliable methods of finding compatibles, adolesence can be de-invented, and all the turmoil associated with it will vanish. Teenagers will work and learn without all the pressures which frustrate them today. This is not only possible, it must happen, it will happen.
dpw
