http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/10/tracing_the_evo.html
I like the way he uses the web to do all this web archaeology work
(((The terminology of the field – neologisms and archaeologisms – moves along with the software and hardware underpinnings of practice, but it sometimes precedes it and sometimes lags it. The language people use for their work and the things they actually do seem to communicate asynchronously.)))
"In examining the origins of 'social software' we can see the terminology for the field has moved through a sort of life cycle. There have been many terms for this type of software, some of which have taken off, and some of which have not.
Typically, a visionary originates a term, and a community around that visionary may (or may not) adopt it. The diaspora of the term from that point can be slow, with 10 or 15 years passing before a term is more generally adopted. Once a term is more broadly adopted, it faces the risk of becoming a marketing term, corrupted into differentiating products rather than explaining ideas.
Is 'social software', which just now gaining wide acceptance, destined for the same trash heap of uselessness as 'groupware?' And, if so, what impact does the changing of this terminology have on the field of social software itself? Only the future holds those answers ...
(((It's true that only the future holds these answers, but the past is just sort of sitting there under his search engine. Not only can he use Google to mine USENET discussions, but he can email the "visionaries" who coin neologisms and ask them what the heck they are doing. Which leads, among other highly interesting things, to the discovery that Eric "Nanotechnology" Drexler is the guy who made up the term "social software." Wow.)))
