A BBC NEWS writer (Bill Thompson) writea about the buzzings around “Social Software”.  This first paragraph caught my eye:

But it is now possible to have a serious debate about the social impact of the internet without mentioning protocols, packets or programming, and that in itself is significant progress.

But I am very doubtful about whether the ongoing debate, in the blogs and mailing lists and conferences, is actually taking us anywhere interesting.

OK then,  I didn’t see this; I did NOT find it via a blog (which I did)) and it didn’t contribute to a pile of articles I’ve been seeing that caused this movement/defintion/debate to appear on my radar, and thus compel me to “blog it”.

First, because treating all the many tools and services that allow people to interact with each other over the network as a single thing, demonstrates yet again the Western desire for simplification and regimentation instead of seeking to understand complexity. Second, and more significantly, I am saddened that the last 20 years of research into human computer interaction, and the last 100 years of research into human psychology and the ways we manage communication with each other, has been totally disregarded by the people discussing social software.

Who has he been reading?  He must have missed Howard Rheingold, Jon Lebowsky (and lots of conversation going on in places like Brainstorms, David Weinberger, Doc Searls,  and somehow,  he missed ME too 🙂