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Social Computing 1.0
| 4.16.2006
I've really been interested in Social Computing and how it interacts with design. By the way, Social Computing refers to the use of software, and technology that supports social interaction and communication. Social computing is based on existing social models or related to specific social contexts. Examples of social computing include email, IM, Blogs, Wikis, del.icio.us, Gather, craigslist...you get the idea...community building tools and technology. So all these tools and technology are great, but putting a brand and user interface design on top of them is another story. No longer are most companies interested in a marketing site that looks pretty. The new trend is to create and support social interactions between and among a corporation and their clients - yet another extension of brand. For example, blogs are great at enabling and extending a two-way dialog among customers instead of company to customer communication only. The trick is to wrap a brand around these tools to help create a cohesive user experience that's trustworthy and compelling. All this new technology and methodologies are great but social interactions and forums have been around for thousands of years. Town meetings, soap boxes, even public executions were a way for the community to come together and share news...oy!
One of the more interesting social interactions that's been going on for hundreds of years and still exists to this day, takes place in a little wooden barrel on an island at the ass end of the Galapagos six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador. This barrel has served many of ships acting as a virtual post office. Sailors stopping on the island would pick up mail destined for their ships' port of call. Today, it's mostly used by travelers and tourists. The idea is that you pick up a letter that's either addressed to where you live or where you would like to travel. The concept is the same as social computing, meeting other people via mutual interests and context. I remember reading a story in a great travel book called "The Kindness of Strangers" about a lady who was from chicago but wanted to travel to Italy. She picked a letter from the barrel addressed to someone in Florence and takes the trip 6 months later. So when she arrived at this stranger's house in Italy, they practically adopted her and showed her all around the region for a solid week.
So I decided to test this whole barrel thing...My friend, Jeanne, told me she was traveling to the Galapagos and I enlisted as my proxy to procure a letter for somewhere interesting as well as to put one into the barrel addressed to me to see if it would ever make it back. Jeanne said the barrel is pretty touristy these days and is less of a barrel and more of a wooden box. The selection wasn't that great but she did manage to get my a postcard destined for non other than Brookline, MA. I think this postcard made it back to the states before the people who sent it. I purposely held off delivering it for more effect. I attempted a few weeks later but no one was home. I may try again this weekend. I'm thinking it could go two different ways when they answer the door. They're either going to invite me in, offer me drinks and after hours of getting to know each other, ask me to be their child's legal guardian should anything happen to them. The alternative is that they'll tip me and wonder where my delivery attire is. I also did receive the letter that Jeanne addressed to me from a couple in Florida. They missed the whole social context and mailed it from their home in Cape Coral. The killer was that they just put a stamp on it with a line of copy on the outside of the original envelope that said "found it on Galapagos." So no note or "story" behind this one. I'm hoping to make up for the lack of "social experience" when I deliver the postcard to the family in Brookline. Stay tuned!
posted at 3:35 AM
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