OSS updates.

We have a twitter: opensourcesocio. Please contribute to discussion via tags "#sociology" "opensocio"

More members are trickling in, though I'd like to start focusing my efforts on getting us exposed to more people.

Getting back from vacation tomorrow, new thoughts and ideas coming soon!

The Badge, Updated

Want to post the "OSS" badge on your blog? Just copy and paste this simple html code....

Without these brackets []
Other updates...

The network has a few members, hope to see some more soon.

OSS Community, Network

Alright, it's done! Open Source Sociology now has a home on Ning. It's drafty in there, and definitely needs some more decorating. It's also quiet! I'm hoping folks will find there way there with the help of everyone spreading the word. Just pass the link to anyone you know who is 1) a sociologist, post-graduate, graduate or under-graduate, or 2) a social scientist of any kind. It'll be a great place for us to get situated, discuss, share knowledge and help the network spread. Also, it's a place to begin talking to each other!

Open Source Sociology.

If you or anyone you know is crafty with website design, or would like to assist in building the network (moderators, bloggers, etc), please contact me: shaman sun (at) g mail.

Google "Wave," the tip of socio-technological evolution?

Google's latest project, "Wave," is still in development, but they've already given us a great description:

What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

In essence, Wave appears to be a virtual workstation. To me, this seems to be a further evolution in the growing trend towards ever-more-collaborative technologies. Apple has a similar idea built into their operating system, Leopard, where users can share a desktop. These ideas have the potential to really evolve the collaborative-media sphere that is quickly becoming the most interesting phenomenon the internet has to offer. More updates as they come along. For now, here's the video offered on the Wave page:

Spotlight: "Institution vs. Collaboration"

Clay Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. In this video, he articulates just how society is transforming from the ground up. Instead of needing institutions and "centralized" agents, we are growing towards a decentralized and network-style way of running society. Technology empowers everyday people to do things never before possible.

What is open source sociology?

The purpose of this blog, as well as other blogs that join the network, is to engage in a simple but growing medium of communication. Internet communication is becoming an integral part of social communication in modern societies. As the means to express ourselves enhances and evolves, this interconnected, networked social structure emerging in the 21st century has potential to revolutionize the way society works. Many have taken the networked, decentralized structure of the internet, and used it to develop the "open source" philosophy. Originally starting as a term for sharing programming source codes, "openly" in a collaborative atmosphere, open source has become a word for a growing collaborative way of creating content. Aside from operating systems and websites, pictures, music, writing, videos and film have all become an expression of this new idea. Websites like Creative Commons offer both a community and a means to license your work for a new internet age.

The latest aspect of society to be influenced by "open source," are the scientific fields. The power of sharing scientific knowledge with other researchers across the globe can revolutionize scientific development. Researchers can cross-examine each other's work, learn the pros and cons and more efficiently. Other new technological developments means departments and organizations, no matter where they are, can share their work and collaborate. This was never possible before. The latest and greatest example is Science Commons.

What "Open Sociology," means to do is begin applying this not only to the hard sciences, but the social sciences. We seek to create the beginning of a "social science commons." The internet offers us a powerful transformative tool for communication, research, and social activism. Why not take advantage of it? That's the purpose of this blog, and the blog network in a nutshell. We aim to plant the seeds for a grassroots network of sociologists, anthropologists and other social science professors, students and advocates, to share their knowledge, collaborate on research and activism, and help the social sciences take an updated and evolved place in an ever changing civilization.

"I believe that the world needs public sociology - a sociology that transcends the academy - more than ever. Our potential publics are multiple, ranging from media audiences to policy makers, from silenced minorities to social movements. They are local, global, and national. As public sociology stimulates debate in all these contexts, it inspires and revitalizes our discipline. In return, theory and research give legitimacy, direction, and substance to public sociology. Teaching is equally central to public sociology: students are our first public for they carry sociology into all walks of life. Finally, the critical imagination, exposing the gap between what is and what could be, infuses values into public sociology to remind us that the world could be different." -Michael Buroway