Comments on: The clarity challenge http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2008/02/01/the-clarity-challenge/ Same old blog, brand new place Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:18:36 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Tom Morris http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2008/02/01/the-clarity-challenge/comment-page-1/#comment-24684 Tom Morris Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:00:42 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2008/02/01/the-clarity-challenge/#comment-24684 What would increase clarity? Getting rid of the phrase 'social graph' would be a good start. It means sweet F.A. as far as I'm concerned and serves no purpose except to help spread ambiguous waffle. Case in point: 'OpenSocial'. It's a widget platform, but the way that the bloggers covered it you'd think it was the second coming. I have seen no use of the phrase 'social graph' where simply replacing it with 'social network' would have reduced the meaning a jot. When I see someone use the phrase 'social graph', I tend to think "what are they trying to obscure from view?" It's a marker for dishonesty in a way that actually describing the technology (microformats, FOAF, RSS, OpenID, APIs, widget platforms etc.) isn't. What would increase clarity? Getting rid of the phrase ’social graph’ would be a good start. It means sweet F.A. as far as I’m concerned and serves no purpose except to help spread ambiguous waffle. Case in point: ‘OpenSocial’. It’s a widget platform, but the way that the bloggers covered it you’d think it was the second coming.

I have seen no use of the phrase ’social graph’ where simply replacing it with ’social network’ would have reduced the meaning a jot. When I see someone use the phrase ’social graph’, I tend to think “what are they trying to obscure from view?” It’s a marker for dishonesty in a way that actually describing the technology (microformats, FOAF, RSS, OpenID, APIs, widget platforms etc.) isn’t.

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