I’m interested in this topic but this post strikes me as vague and meandering, which I guess might be an artifact of it being originally intended for Medium (maybe Medium audiences don’t know what social technology is at all?) I’d like to see more detailed and example-heavy posts about social technology on LW.
Yes! It was intended to be a simple introduction to the concept.
I agree in-depth exploration of social technologies being a valuable kind of writing & research, but to include them in this piece would balloon it quickly. The “examples” given are not instances, but categories. I don’t even claim it is an exhaustive list of useful categories of social technology. There will be future pieces that reference back to this one, with detailed object level examples for each category.
As an example for a in-depth treatment of a category of social technology I would recommend David Friedman’s book on law and even that doesn’t exhaust the category.
I’m interested in this topic but this post strikes me as vague and meandering, which I guess might be an artifact of it being originally intended for Medium (maybe Medium audiences don’t know what social technology is at all?) I’d like to see more detailed and example-heavy posts about social technology on LW.
Yes! It was intended to be a simple introduction to the concept.
I agree in-depth exploration of social technologies being a valuable kind of writing & research, but to include them in this piece would balloon it quickly. The “examples” given are not instances, but categories. I don’t even claim it is an exhaustive list of useful categories of social technology. There will be future pieces that reference back to this one, with detailed object level examples for each category.
As an example for a in-depth treatment of a category of social technology I would recommend David Friedman’s book on law and even that doesn’t exhaust the category.