Dumb software and social problems

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

I don’t believe that social problems require technological solutions.

But, of course, that begs more than a few questions. Ricky called me on them, asking:

Are blogs a technological solution to a social problem (that of communicating ideas with others)? Is not the existence of “social software” in and of itself evidence that some social problems can be solved or lessened by technology?

Also you say “In order to allow people to be social protocol negotiating machines, good software should give people the information they need to perform social negotiations”. But doesn’t that imply that the software needs some kind of social model (i.e., so that the software can decide what information to present to the user at any given moment)? Or do you mean software should merely present some kind of query interface to allow the person to retrieve the required information?

In order to answer the first part, we need to agree on what we mean by “technology” and also “social problem”. First, as Julian Bleeker points out, all software (and so, by extension, all technology) is social:

Software is always social: any endeavor partaken by social beings is, you know..social.

At one level, all technology problems are social problems.

But I don’t believe, as I stated above, that social problems require technological solutions. Indeed, I would say that technological solutions to social problems will always be incomplete.

So, to Ricky’s questions. Are blogs (or “social software”) technological solution to a social problem, that of sharing ideas? My answer is that it depends on where you draw the line between “social” and “technological”. Blogs use language to communicate ideas. Is language a technology or can we put it in the social basket? (Can’t it be both?) Are newspapers and (academic) journals a technology? (Yes.) I would say that blogs are as much a technological solution to a social problem as newspapers are. So, this also provides my answer to the second part of Ricky’s first question, technologies can be used to present solutions to social problems. But in offering a technological solution to an existing social problem, new and interesting social problems necessarily occur. It may even be the case that the new technology doesn’t solve the social problem you meant to solve.

Second, Ricky asks about whether social models should be embedded in software or if software should allow people to query for the data they need in any given instance. But, in order to query for data, doesn’t there need to be a structure anyway? I think that the answer is yes. And, I think that it is impossible not to have social models embedded in (social) software. Thus, I defer once again to Julian Bleeker:

Social Softwares are things that allow me to maintain the network of people that matter amongst particular aspects of my lives (professional, personal, both, family, home, etc.) through the circulation of social semantics, communication, establishing dialogues and conversations, sharing cultures, disseminating meaning, the whole thing.

You can’t do those things without an embedded social protocol. Email has an embedded social protocol! However (don’t you hate how sociologists are always equivocating?) the embedded social protocol in anything is open to negotiation and is enacted by people as they use the thing. Within the bounds of what is possible with a particular technology, there may be many ways to enact it. As the social structures around a particular technology change, the way people relate to that technology changes which leads to a renegotiation of the enactment of the “embedded” (note scare quotes!) social protocol.

Instead of “enact”, some other researchers have used the word “inscription” to describe the process of putting a view of the world into a technology or technological artifact:

Designers thus define actors with specific tastes, competencies, motives, aspirations, political prejudices, and the rest, and they assume that morality, technology, science, and economy will evolve in particular ways. A large part of the work of innovators is that of “inscribing” this vision of (or prediction about) the world in the technical content of the new object. (Akrich, 1992)

But where does this leave me with my hardline stance on not believing that social problems require technological solutions? I think I’m right back where I started. Social problems do not require technological solutions. If you build a technological solution to a social problem, you will end up creating different social problems anyway. The trick will be to create your technological solution in such a way as to make is possible to socially route around the social problems your technology engenders. Or, rather, not make the social protocol so deeply embedded in your technology that people can’t route around it socially should they decide it’s necessary to do so.

So, you can’t not embed a social protocol in a technology. The art is in embedding a social protocol that allows people to achieve what you set out to let them achieve. There are always choices to make when designing software.

Some of those choices can clearly enhance the possibilities for human agency, just as others clearly diminish it. The challenge for those of us who practice and/or teach technology design is to recognise that such choices exist and accept responsibility for those that we make. (Robertson, 2002)