After reading GAM3R 7H30RY and talking to marmalade yesterday about publishing networked writing in print, I've started thinking a lot more about authorship as it relates to the transfer of online-to-print material.

Among other things, lately I've started thinking about the publishing industry since graduation is looming, and in particular, I was curious about publishing writings from compilations such as slambooks. What if somebody wanted to publish a childhood slambook? Who gets the credit--the person who took the initiative and went through the formalities/procedures to getting the actual book published, or would there be some sort of "thank you to Mrs. C's sixth grade class of 1996"? I think a year or two ago, when I was in an Urban Outfitters store, I saw a book that was basically a collection of some random guy's middle school notes that he passed around behind the teacher's back when he was twelve. He'd saved all those notes and then published them in a book. I can't remember if he credited his classmates or other note writers. I remembered this example again when we read GAM3R 7H30RY and all these issues about credit and authorship came up again.

So, we read about social software and its various forms this week. A few thoughts after reading/browsing through the websites--

1) Is it just me or does "social software" seem like a highly vague and generic term that pretty much describes almost everything that we do online? The Wikipedia entry defines social software as media that "enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities." Wikipedia's list of social software encompasses anything and everything technology/communications related, including several topics we've already covered in class like blogs and video game worlds. My initial reaction was that it seemed almost daunting and impossible that we attempt to cover "social software" in just one week because such software seems to include enough material for an entire semester's worth of discussion.