I guess I qualitfy as a social software developer since some of the software I write and dream about helps people communicate with and inform each other.  As an engineer, I am drawn to social software.  Social software's potential for changing people's lives is exciting.  Its relative unexplored nature, like the wild wild west, is also exciting.  I believe social software will achieve its technical goals, allowing people to form new social structures online.

Still, I have misgivings about whether the social software's broader goal to improve human societies will be met.  Even worse, I fear the opposite.  Social software could fragment human societies into clusters with sharply contrasting views of reality.  My fear stems from my observation of Korean society.

Korea is emerging as one of the most advanced Internet nation in the world.  Young Koreans, in particular, live and breath Internet, each belonging to large number of online communities.  One would expect them to be well informed and objective, yet they are not.  Their views are warped and often radical.  While all the world's information is at their fingertip, they consume information subjectively and produce misinformation biased by their views.  Adding highly effective social software to this is frightening to me.

When I was last in Korea, a close friend of mine told me he was thinking about sending his six-year old daughter to schools in the US.  I was shocked.  How could he think this way?  He said he initially thought the idea ridiculous, but he changed his mind after talking with people he knew, people who are just as well-to-do as his family.  Apparently, they are all thinking the same thing and this warped his common sense.

In a sense, social clusters form gravity wells which has its own local physical laws and is difficult to escape from.  Social softwares make it easier to create and grow such clusters.  There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about social software.  Like a gun, its just a tool.  Only problem is that this gun can put holes in our societies, holes like Al-Queda.  Does this mean I am against social software?  No.  I don't think development of social software can be stopped. 

What I do want my fellow social software developers to do is to think about negative impacts of social software and try to come up with mechanisms that could minimize that threat.