5 ms·

> Being social is all about disorganization, spontaneity, creativity, breaking out of all the stupid taxonomies that we impose on other people and have imposed

> Being social is all about disorganization, spontaneity, creativity, breaking out of all the stupid taxonomies that we impose on other people and have imposed on us. That is a very euro-centric, post-modernist way of thinking. What are caste system if not social? What are far-flung familial relations if not social? A definition of being "social" which only applies to societies where friendship is paramount, and friends come and go with ease is too limiting and leads you to solutions that can be awkward in other societies. For example, in my country, we care deeply about family and ancestory--so much so that in every generation one member of the family is nominated to be the "memory keeper" (sorry, there's no translatable word) who keeps track of the geneology of everyone, and is expected at a glance to determine if a stranger is at least vaguely related to us. Would a free form social graph be useful to us---not really. Our facebook pages are practically 90% family members, 10% people who through marriage will become family members.

pak 15y ago
> That is a very euro-centric, post-modernist way of thinking. You're right, even the way I defined "social" is too limited. But that irony only helps my point. You cannot define social, but this is precisely what the "social graph" is attempting to do. As soon as you create a definition, people react to it and oftentimes rebel against it. And then you are right back to the drawing board.
- __alexs 15y ago
  I agree with you but that doesn't make the creation of social graphs a waste of time right? It just means the market has a lot of niches for different types of graph that each provide limited and specific value. It's not about creating perfect Platonic models. It's about making cool things that people find useful. If you are trying to design a system that scaled to every single possible interaction from scratch then you've already failed, you can't compete with reality at that one.

pak 15y ago

> That is a very euro-centric, post-modernist way of thinking. You're right, even the way I defined "social" is too limited. But that irony only helps my point. You cannot define social, but this is precisely what the "social graph" is attempting to do. As soon as you create a definition, people react to it and oftentimes rebel against it. And then you are right back to the drawing board.

__alexs 15y ago
I agree with you but that doesn't make the creation of social graphs a waste of time right? It just means the market has a lot of niches for different types of graph that each provide limited and specific value. It's not about creating perfect Platonic models. It's about making cool things that people find useful. If you are trying to design a system that scaled to every single possible interaction from scratch then you've already failed, you can't compete with reality at that one.