ITP has long recognizing that human sociability motivates a large part the usage of computers and computers networks. By coining the term “social software” Clay Shirky gave shape to this whole area just when many of modern tools such as Blogs and Wikis were about the explode on the scene. We knew Clay was going to fit in perfectly when the first thing he did as a faculty member was to half build a server, give it to the students and watch what happened. It was an IT nightmare but an explosion of student driven initiatives. Most notably the “Drive Bys” which are peer learning tech sessions that really free up our curriculum choices. Most of the then exotic things like Wikis that emmerged on that machine are now standard on our production server.

  • Develop a pattern language for online moderation — how do people manage online conversational spaces to keep them from becoming flame-ridden cesspools.