Social Technologies
Authors: Joseph Timoney, Azeema Yaseen and Damien McEvoy – , Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University
Social technologies enable meaningful social interactions between people, devoid of geographical and time constraints. These technologies are facilitated by a networked communication capability, for example the Internet or a mobile device. We can say, they act as a bridge between humans, no matter how remote they are from each other. Do you know that Facebook, Twitter, and Skype are social technology enabled social networks? If you have an internet connection, they are accessible. Some of these tools are general purpose, while others are domain specific, such as those targeted for health (e.g., wearables and mobile Health), or music (e.g., SoundCloud, Spotify). The three branches of social technologies are illustrated in Figure 1. below.
The development and application of social technologies will promote aims driven by the All institute; The ALL institute aims to facilitate human living and improve the quality of lives across any boundaries, supported by appropriate technologies. To achieve this, the All Institute provides an unparalleled interdisciplinary environment to develop and promote such technologies.
Aligning with this aim, our research interest is the intersection between the two in the form of social technologies for healthcare (patient-practitioners) through musical activities. The theme of our work is ‘Ubiquitous music (ubimus)’ and has a strong social and community underpinning. Our objective is to create social music technology applications: they facilitate networked interaction and engagement that would otherwise be impossible. This will allow inter-connections between people to raises their sense of wellbeing through creative activity, which is increasingly recognised as being important to all aspects of peoples’ health.
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