What is a social technology?
The Wikipedia page didn’t leave me with any particularly clear understanding of to recognise one in the wild. I’m definitely not thinking of “social software” as this McKinsey article seems to be about (I find it amusing that someone can write 1250 words about the “social-technology era” without ever telling us precisely what a social technology is… Perhaps its meaning is just so obvious that no definition is needed.) Gavin Leech mentioned the phrase at ESPR to describe a particular set of tools and traditions that made coordination of the programme easier, but it seemed like something that could be talked about more generally, as a specific type of technology that communities can develop and innovate in. (Atlas had its own social technologies, and somebody talked about them explicitly there too.)
In introductory microeconomics the definition of a technology we learn is “a process of transforming inputs into outputs”. Can we apply this to social technology? I suppose in some sense they help turn a group of people (inputs) into a collective system (outputs), but a neater way of putting this would be nice.
A fellow ESPR/FABRIC participant has a post on social infrastructure – maybe think of these social technologies as tools for developing good social infrastructure?
A collection of social technologies
Currently not very well-explained, but will flesh out in future.
- Humming for silence
- “3, 2, 1, PROGRESS!”
- Or rituals more generally
- Envelopes for 1:1s (and letters)
- Stating privacy levels
- Hand gestures for “speak louder”, “slow down”
- Hand polls
- Psychologist game
- Four interests, one of which is false
- “Would you rather I do X or I not do X?”
- A less leading, though wordier, way of asking for consent
- Hotseat
- And menus of questions more generally, to give plausible deniability
- Date me docs
- Third-party introductions
- Introduction cache-clearing
- Write four sequentially and use the last one
- Second-degree dinners
- You and a friend each invite a friend (who doesn’t know the other), and both of whom invite a further friend (whom you and your friend both don’t know)
- Hamming questions