The process of building out this site has inevitably involved
design choices about how to engage with various technologies
and other people's web presences. It's a truism that you can't
solve social problems with technology, but social media has
made it just as clear that technology does shape the
social dynamics that emerge in the spaces it mediates. This
drives me to wonder: as more of my friends and
friends-of-friends move to individual websites and blogs, what
social dynamics does this give rise to? And what different
technical designs could improve those dynamics?
I think it's most interesting to approach this question from
the social direction rather than the technological. Our first
priority should be a set of social goals for interacting on
the internet, and only with that understanding firmly in hand
can we start usefully interrogating the way technology gives
rise to or fights against the sort of interactions we want. My
ultimate aim is to articulate a clear vision of a way to
interact with people's websites that's not just a pastime or a
research process, but that can meet social needs—to imagine
what I'll call a "sociable web".
Sociable Web not Social Network
I'm using the term "sociable web" as a conscious contrast to
"social network". Social networks have unavoidably shaped our
understanding of what form of socialization is possible
online, and I don't even think it's always been for the worse.
But now they are fragmenting and rotting, and whatever was
good about them—their casual usability, the massive network
effect of "all your friends are here"—is falling away like so
much decayed flesh. I want to envision something new, and when
doing so I often find that a new name can help.
"Web" versus "Network"
I'm not interested in a "network" in the sense either of a
single company overseeing many users or a
decentralized collection of nodes like the Fediverse that is
nevertheless tightly coupled technologically. I don't think
either of these forms are sustainable in a capitalist world.
They are either fed by boundless venture capital coffers which
inevitably move to capitalize their userbase, or they're built
on the backs of massive amounts of unpaid labor and
poorly-understood power structures. The exploitative
conditions under which these networks are produced run
downstream and affect their social dynamics.
I'm interested in a social form that uses as its foundation
the web itself. Where anyone can participate just by having a
website. Where the existing networks are, to some degree, part
of that form already simply by virtue of being
accessible over HTTPS.
"Sociable" versus "Social"
"Social" is unopinionated. "Social" is throwing a bunch of
people into a room and seeing what happens. A party can be
social, but so can a witch hunt. "Social" is thinking about
the technology as primary and allowing the social dynamics to
fall out from that. When things are built to be merely
"social", they force the real humans who use them into chaotic
interactions both healthy and harmful, a…