Social operating systems (SOSs) are identified by Educause in their Horizon Report 2008 as one of the key emerging technologies in education. Unlike social networking systems (such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace), which contain uncontextualised information about users, and then only the connections we have explicitly told them about, Social Operating Systems will be able to take all the data that we have generated on the Web, aggregate it through an API (Application Programming Interface), and provide accurate information about the strength, depth and endurance of our connections.
How? you ask. Well, it’s going to be thanks to our friend Mr Web 3.0 and how he interprets the social graph we are creating with every click of a mouse. Here’s how the Horizon Report describes the social graph:
… the network of relationships a person has, independent of any given networking system or address book; the people one actually knows, is related to, or works with. At the same time, credible information about your social graph is embedded all over the web: in the carbon-copy fields of your emails; in attendee lists from conferences you attend; in tagged Flickr photos of you with people you know; in your comments on their blog posts and in jointly authored papers and presentations published online. (p. 26)
As Google says (and that’s their picture, below), if you take away the documents, you’re left with the connections between people.
SOSs will solve the headache of multiple log-ins and having to re-enter your data in each new social networking site you join, because the system will focus on you and not on the website you are joining. Tim Berners-Lee (who’s gotta know a thing or two) points to the example of booking a plane flight: what interests me is the flight, not the travel company’s website. An SOS will be able to integrate all the information about that flight from various sources and present me with what I need to know. It will be the event/situation/me that will be uppermost, not the websites or the devices or infrastructure that support the SOS.
How all of this relates to education, will be explored in a later post.
Tags: Educause, Futures, Semantic web, Social networking, SOSs, Target, Technology, Trends, Web 3.0
