We call certain apps “social” and the companies behind them “platforms.” Both words feel too obvious to question. Neither one means what it used to.
This video is about that first word, and what it was quietly carrying before software took it. Where “social” came from, who was using it first, and why we can no longer say what we mean when we reach for it.
REFERENCES
William Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980)
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
Irene Greif on the coining of CSCW (1984), in Nature Electronics (2019)
Thomas Erickson & Wendy Kellogg, “Social Translucence” (2000)
danah boyd & Nicole Ellison, “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship” (2007)
Bronisław Malinowski, “The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages,” in The Meaning of Meaning (1923)
Vincent Miller, “New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture” (2008)
Darcy DiNucci, “Fragmented Future” (1999)
Tim O’Reilly, “What Is Web 2.0” (2005)
Christian Crumlish & Erin Malone, Designing Social Interfaces (2015) (2nd edition published 2015)
Tarleton Gillespie, “The Politics of ‘Platforms’” (2010)
This episode is also available on YouTube
