snowdeal.org > ex machina

ex machina

adina levin expands on the etiquette of friendship declaration and makes a simple, but powerful observation regarding digital insecurity and group-forming :

"Kellan, Snowdeal, deus_x, and raster write about digital insecurity -- the anxiety you feel about asking a colleague to be your "friend" or "contact" on Ryze and similar systems.

The reason is that there is no context for asking. The question doesn't correspond to a social form in real life."

i also agree with her that rules for formalizing types of relationships aren't going to help the problem:

"I don't think we need better FOAF metadata descriptions of the nuances of relationship. "I have now moved Bob from the category of FriendlyAquaintance to ModeratelyGoodFriend". Instead, we need better groupforming mechanisms, so people can become friends naturally."

i think that in a small way, this is precisely what mark pilgrim has done by simple offering an open invitation to be his foaf friend:

"If you have a FOAF file (or this post inspires you to make a FOAF file, using the FOAF-a-matic), please email me at f8dy@diveintomark.org so I can add you to my FOAF profile. Any friend of FOAF is a friend of mine."

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2/06/2003 10:11:00 PM 0 comments

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