Social Computing @ Social Computing

There has been a great deal of discussion about the use of social computing technologies (primarily IRC chat) to create backchannels — for discussion — at the Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposium. this past Monday and Tuesday. Given the theme of, and participants at, the symposium, it is both ironic (or at least sweetly self-referential) and opportune: I suggest (in a comment posted in that discussion thread) that we take advantage of the event to better understand the use and impacts of social computing technologies.

(I hope to post more about the event soon.)