[Sigia-l] "Social Interface"

[Eric Scheid]

On 11/9/04 11:04 AM, "Boniface Lau" <boniface_lau at compuserve.com> wrote:

> By managing such file system, Unix mediates between people.
> 
ah, but the person-to-person interaction which occurs is not social. You
don't know who is using which disk block (for example), and you very
probably don't care. You are not trying to communicate with the other user,
you simply are avoiding grabbing the same disk block at the same time.

> Not only does Unix mediate, its mediation is many times more sophisticated
> than that of "online classifieds"
> 
who said sophistication is the dominant determinator? The thing with "online
classifieds", as simple as they are, they are communications from one
distinct person to other distinct persons (well, distinct when they care to
respond that is). In the full communications loop, it is this-person
communicating with that-person.

> Yes, he was talking about the interface for software that mediates between
> people. But he was NOT talking about the "interface for a software mediated
> social environment".

Wasn't he? He wasn't talking about DBMS or Core OS software, he was
discussing person to person contexts. He's discussing software which is a
subset of your (rather) broad definition of any software that sits between
users and other users or resources those others users also want to use.

> Database management system is another prominent type of software that
> sophisticatedly mediates between people and existed since the 1960s
> 
DBMS mediates social interaction? That's news to me. Sure, there are
*applications* of DBMS which mediates social interaction, but it's a push to
say that a software system that imposes resource sharing rules is mediating
a social interaction.

> - long before the Internet.
> 
Ignore the "before the Internet" part of Joel's discussion please. It's a
red herring, a strawman, a bit of indulgent hyperbole.

> "Software that mediates between people" is not a "software mediated social
> environment".
> 

One is a sub-set of the other. Simple resource sharing policy enforcement
fits in one, but not the other. Software that promotes *social* interaction
(as different from say anti-social/asocial interaction) between persons are
creating a "social environment".

So while this is true:

> "Software that mediates between people" is not a
> "software mediated social environment".

the following *is* true:

> "Software mediated social environment" is a
> "software that mediates between people"

(barring clumsy copy/paste grammar mangling)

e.