I like the use of the phrase ‘social industry’. I think it’s a good framing to use rather than social media. It brings to the fore the co-optation by industry of what Ton calls social software, turning it into an industry.

In the Novara interview, Seymour talks about how when using social media (controlled by social industry) you are in some ways interacting more with a machine than with other people. Likes, retweets, etc, are part of this machinery. These have become industrial abstractions of actual social relations.

Analagous in some ways I feel to how Taylorism abstracted the movements of skilled labourers into smaller and smaller discrete motions, which could then be mechanised and repeated monotonously without skill or craft.

Digital time-and-motion men have abstracted social interactions into meaningless facsimiles of real interaction, real desire or affection.

Better a social craft than a social industry I think. Small tech and social software can be part of a that I think, but re-repurposing or even breaking some of the frames that industry co-opted and mechanised.

Writing a blog post, or a considered reply to someone else’s, takes more time and emotional craft than a like. But it’s more rewarding overall. It’s hopefully less alienating.