We’re designing a new kind of social networking service (SNS) that emphasizes sustainability. This means making online interactions economically viable and technically feasible, but more fundamentally it concerns the formation of more respectful and deeper human relationships mediated online.
Most of the SNS that have been developed hitherto have been technologically led and often strongly market-driven. We prefer an approach that is rooted in humanity and places greater consideration at the outset on intentions because these lead directly to social impact. As such it may be regarded as a manifesto, but this is not mere philosophy – on this site are many details, a kind of blueprint for system implementation.
We are provisionally calling this service Sigala, named after the householder in ancient India who was instructed by the Buddha on how to conduct many kinds of relationships in a fruitful manner, but to distinguish this service we put the stress on the ‘i’, the same as for ‘Figaro’, whereas the original put the stress on the first ‘a’, which would actually be spelt Sigāla.
The work presented here follows on from a paper presented in the context of Buddhism and Social Science – Supporting Kalyāṇamittatā Online: New Architectures for Sustainable SocialNetworking, which is concerned with the cultivation of genuine friendship, a goal that lies at the heart of this project. The challenges facing householders today may be very different in their details, but the principles concerning how to behave as conscientious human beings and the basic roles and relationships in life (in family, education and work) remain the same. Illustrations of some of our many contemporary issues are provided by reference to items on the BBC News Web site – the BBC has been reporting on SNS for a long time and is fairly indicative of popular views.
So whilst we start in a fairly conventional way in surveying general system requirements, we do so really to step back from the technology to reflect on what we are really hoping to achieve, to address the core issues in design by reconsidering timeless and noble human paradigms. Through the application of these paradigms, we will bring in something very different to the long history [in virtual terms] of community platforms1.
Read more … about the rationale.
Note
1 The continual stream of alternatives emerging and available is indicated in Fiona Graham’s article, Social science: Fancy building your own social network? BBC News 2 December 2011 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15976135