[Sigia-l] "Social Interface"

[Eric Scheid]

On 10/9/04 12:18 PM, "Boniface Lau" <boniface_lau at compuserve.com> wrote:

> Also, what is a "software mediated social environment"? Consider
> someone who closed the office door to signal to co-workers that he/she
> didn't want to be interrupted. Without anyone beside, the person then
> sat in front of a workstation to handle email. Is that a "software
> mediated social environment"?

Regardless of where they are, office door open or not, sitting in a
Starbucks or buck naked under the stars ... if he's using email to
communicate with other people then he's using software to communicate person
to person, and hopefully in a social manner (ie. not anti-social, asocial,
or otherwise inhuman manner).

That I think is the key to the definition: human to human social
communication, using software as the bridge between.

Thus, a social environment which is *mediated* by software, not a social
environment which exists in it's own right but just happens to have software
involved (your example of an office environment with someone using email).

e.