Social Systems - Social Systems and Digital/online Worlds

Social Systems and Digital/online Worlds

Social systems sciences is a loose term for engineered environments which, if successful, attract users to participate. The advent of computers and the internet has enabled new types of social systems to take form.

There are multiple methods of measuring participation within a social system. Reach, engagement, frequency of participation – all tell something about the success of a social system.

All social systems have commonalities. One is that they become more fun and interesting as more people play and participate. Another is that with each iteration, or version, very quickly the population or interest reaches a plateau.

Indeed, the world is one large social system, split into many smaller social systems.

  • Digital social systems
  • Virtual worlds
  • Role-playing games as social systems

When the Internet first reached the hands of the populace, people took the existing model of dungeons and dragons and created their own digital versions of the worlds once played by people in their living rooms and basements. These first text-based online role-playing games attracted people who enjoyed the social aspect of battling for gold and riches. Hundreds of new worlds sprouted up. Some of these worlds were designed more successfully than others. In terms of reach, some of these worlds supported thousands of users, while some only tens to hundreds.

Read more about this topic:  Social Systems

Famous quotes containing the words social, systems and/or worlds:

    The rebel, unlike the revolutionary, does not attempt to undermine the social order as a whole. The rebel attacks the tyrant; the revolutionary attacks tyranny. I grant that there are rebels who regard all governments as tyrannical; nonetheless, it is abuses that they condemn, not power itself. Revolutionaries, on the other hand, are convinced that the evil does not lie in the excesses of the constituted order but in order itself. The difference, it seems to me, is considerable.
    Octavio Paz (b. 1914)

    Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    And who in time knowes whither we may vent
    The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores
    This gaine of our best glorie shal be sent,
    T’inrich unknowing Nations with our stores?
    What worlds in th’yet unformed Occident
    May come refin’d with th’accents that are ours?
    Samuel Daniel (c. 1562–1619)