Talk:Social technology

Derxen (talk) 16:46, 28 October 2011 (UTC) H.T.Wierenga and I agree that the Social Technology page should stay. The term is certainly not a neologism, but has a long and fascinating history, going back to the late 19th century and continuing to this day. We've been studying this history, and intend to contribute what we kow to this page in the coming weeks. We've started with a brief overview of the history of Social Technology until the 1940's.

DPardoeWilson (talk) 16:17, 17 March 2009 (UTC) It has been proposed the the page Social Technology be deleted because it is a neologism. The first line of the page cites an unimpeachable source, the Rand Corporation's book Social Technology by Olaf Helmer, Bernice Brown and Theodore Gordon (Basic Books, 1966) -- 42 years ago, hardly a neologism! The page also cites a more recent book Groundswell: living in a world transformed by social technologies (Forrester, 2008), and a search for "Social Technology" on any reputable search engine like Google produces large numbers of hits for the term, including, for example a conference on Social Technology to be given this summer in Mancester, England, with many notable speakers. Why would anyone consider the term Social Technology a neologism?

Untitled
Please note that there are already two pages on social software, one Social software and another Social Software the only difference in page name being the capitalization.

Since the term Social Technology has been used in books for at least 42 years, since it was use as the title of a well-known Rand Corporation book, and is currently a term quite generally used, I insist that it is not a neologism and want the Social Technology page to remain. If it stays up, I will edit and improve it. If not, how can I, or anyone, do that?


 * Looks like it is still here! There is a semi-democratic process (based on Fascism, IMHO) for page removal.  So if you put up some text, and put up a good defense--it will stay.  I agree that it needs to stay, but read my entry below!--John Bessa (talk) 16:01, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2019 and 14 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Marissadorros.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:40, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

added references and more words
Skaržauskienė A., Tamošiūnaitė R., Žalėnienė I. (2013) Defining Social Technologies: evaluation of social collaboration tools and technologies, Electronic Journal Information Systems Evaluation Volume 16 Issue 3 2013, ISSN 1566-6379, p.232-241 Made it a better page, adding references and more words about the topic, so maybe it will stay around for a while. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DPardoeWilson (talk • contribs) 18:07, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Criticism of the Internet society
I "feel" as if I invented the Internet because when I first got started in 1989, there were I had only about 1000 fellow engineers, and most of them were geeks in the anti-social sense, and I may have been alone in my faith in the social power of the Internet. It took six years for the Web to arrive, which was the necessary ingredient for a social Internet.

For a number of years, I was a key player on the Care2.com social activist site, where I moderated two groups that did phenomenal research, [Empathy] and [Katrina Hurricane and Flood Support]. In particular, Katrina was first in Google searches during the crisis, and appeared to have an effect on Congress, as one of the members is a Congressman.

But Care2 devolved from an activist site to a nearly purely commercial site acting as a vehicle for Mumford's corporate "false charity," promoting misconceptions such as the hypothesis that hybrid vehicles will reverse global-warming.

As can be expected, an activist site will have contention, and none was more explosive between animal lovers and hunter-supporters. The contention was labeled as violent abuse, and specially hired cops terminated activists who where, for the most part, simply defending themselves. Criticism of Care2's shift to commercialism was also a reason for termination, as it was perceived to impact revenue (hardly activist), and another reason for termination was for applying critical inquiry to the "causes" section, which is the vehicle for corporate false charity, also being revenue-related.

Further, Care2 partners such as the activist technology support system Convio, specialized in expanding non-for-profits that are specifically engineered to profit from loop-holes in non-profit laws, and the Petition Site that offers petition software, but then uses trickery to put Care2 members into the reach of the for-profit not-for-profits.

From my experience, I can only describe Care2, the most social of sites, as purely Fascist, but I should add that despite the Fascism there, activism persists, but only "below the radar."

I have also been active on the Rangefinderforum.com, Facebook, and of course the wikimedia empire. I have similar criticisms for all these sites.

One site that is actually very different and very successful is the purely commercial meetup.com. It only seeks to bring people to face-to-face meeings, for a fee.--John Bessa (talk) 16:01, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Original Research
Saying X author did Y in book Z, cannot be cited by book Z - that's at best synthesis or more likely WP:OR. This is an encyclopedia article, not an academic literature guide. I've converted these illegitimate circular references to these books to inline, formatted mentions. Toddst1 (talk) 16:47, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Missing Content
Social technology is a popular topic in the social area. However, current knowledge has been limited to its relation to social engineering and social software. I think social technology needs its own exact definition, and also need more details about its development.

--Ruonan Zhang (talk) 23:53, 14 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that social technology is in desperate need for a definition to exclude ambiguity or misunderstanding. And the relationship of social engineering and software might not stay solid as they may include original research to make the assertions. Also, I believe a developing process of related area should be verified as soon as possible.


 * --ScarVaapad (talk) 00:07, 15 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I read the good article criteria again and find places we need to develop in this article. A good article should meet several requirements such as 'well-written', 'no original research' and 'broad in its coverage'. However, Social Technology hasn't meet any requirement of them. It lacks a accurate definition of the article, and so-called definition already listed on the page seems to be original research and unreliable. On the other hand, it is apparently not well-written. Here is my plan to improve it.


 * First, search and read articles in the Note session and find out when is the term Social Technology first appeared. Discussions on the Talk Page suggests that the term has a history of over 40 years. Since the little information we can obtain from the wiki page, I believe we need to figure that out on our own. Therefore, starting with a brief overview of the history of Social Technology is a must. And then figure out what it the earliest definition of Social Technology.


 * Second, from my perspective, Social Technology is a popular topic in social network and our society. Although it has some relation with social engineering and social software, I suppose that they are not exactly the same thing. On this article page, only relations have been listed. I think our group need to search more articles not only in the notes session but also in recent years, and then find a more exact definition about nowadays Social Technology. Only when we define what is Social Technology can we know the true relation among these three terms.


 * Third, from the current article, I doubt the reliability of both 'related to social engineering' and 'related to social software' sessions. Although the first session has already added many references, it seems like unaligned. From this session, I found useless details like 'the nature of an effective education in the social sciences to reach effective education by the willing masses' . Instead of 'related to social engineering', I found more definitions of 'Social technology ' which make the article uneasy to read. Therefore, I think our group should rearrange some parts of the 'related' sessions and make them easier to read.


 * --Ruonan Zhang (talk) 06:14, 15 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Someone needs to CLEARLY explain the difference between "Social Engineering" and "Social Software" explain exactly why they are different and what makes them different. The article states "Social Software" was created in the early 21st century. Explain why this new term was created and what was wrong with the old term. The article regarding social software really needs alot more content. See who else has done research relating to social software and cite their content.
 * —Xavierdillahunt (talk) 02:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah, we need to find the difference between "Social Engineering" and "Social Software". The word 'Social Technology' definitely appeared earlier than the other two. Thank you for mention that.
 * --Ruonan Zhang (talk) 19:29, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Missing References
Since most of the reference listed are decades ago, it's highlight to adding more recent reference here to better refine the article again. Via such refinements certain ambiguities or mistaken concepts would be eliminated for clearer definitions of the subject, thus bringing in better developments.

--ScarVaapad (talk) 00:16, 16 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Agree with you. That's exactly what I was thinking. From the talk page I found there a discussion whether social technology is an neologism. I think the reason why this happens because of lacking reference. Actually to some extent, content missing and reference missing, they are two related parts. We can search and read some articles and then contribute to both part.


 * --Ruonan Zhang (talk) 00:38, 16 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Also, I want to add that, with the progress of finding good contents or references there might be some opportunities to combine several similar words which share common features of this area. Good summary with the overlapping contents would help to establish a solid foundation for this subject that benefit future studies.


 * --ScarVaapad (talk) 01:31, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Finding Similar Words
This page has been put here for quite a long time. As once the term "Social Technology" was deleted for being recognized as an neologism, there should be some modifications for this page anytime soon to make a proper stand for this page. My suggestion would be first start with collecting similar words or phases from related areas or even with irrelevant resources so differences would be told.

--ScarVaapad (talk) 01:50, 16 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah, you're right. The terms listed on this page seems to lead to the same meaning, at least very similar meaning. We can work on words first, and these words are also key words when we search for resources.


 * --Ruonan Zhang (talk) 03:36, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Ideas and next-step refinement on the topic
Here are some ideas that I want to keep to refine this article, it might inflict lots of changes on the structure of the page, so anyone please feel free to undo and modify what I'm trying to do in the next few weeks. I'll list my plan as followed:

First, delete the section "related to social software". Using the definition of "technology", the term "software" is included within the concept thus no longer fits this page. I'll quote the definition of "technology" in the first paragraph where I try to explain the idea of "social technology".

Second, change the section of "related to social engineering", this paragraph to me is more likely a history review of social technology, we should categorize it as "history".

Third, list all the possible similar words related to this field and create anti-ambiguity.

Also I'm strongly need for references regarding to this topic, anyone could lend a hand will be welcomed.

Feel free to leave messages on my talk page and let's try to fix this.

ScarVaapad (talk) 05:19, 29 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with you. We should remove the word 'social engineering'. Although they are related, they are not the same things. I am working on the related paper these days. I hope I can find something useful and summary the 'history' your mentioned.
 * --Ruonan Zhang (talk) 20:24, 30 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I changed the sequence and added a history section. Also I added the definition of the "Social Technology", and I think it looks more clear than the previous version. I am working on the articles "The scope of Social Technology" and "A critical review on the social technology".
 * --Ruonan Zhang (talk) 21:17, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * For your information: this article contains much more references: DOI 10.1080/07341512.2013.876247.
 * H.T. Wierenga (talk) 11:14, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Is Social Media a subset of Social Technology
I came upon this page searching for a more generic, technology centric word for social media. I would like to make the case that social media is a subset of Social Technology, especially because social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google have considerable influence over our societies.