I’m laying claim to the term “social instrumentation” to describes the software I’ve been designing on the side at home. It began with the phrase “social tool,” apparently coined by Stowe Boyd back in the day, but it just didn’t seem to capture what I’m going after with this project. At work earlier, I’d been conceiving a framework for performance instrumentation for our Treefrog product. I love the term instrumentation: i conveys a broader sense of scope, integration and utility than the term “tool.” It also has a musical meaning. From Wikipedia:
In music, the word instrumentation is used to refer to the particular combination of musical instruments employed in a composition, and to the properties of those instruments individually. Instrumentation is also sometimes used as a synonym for orchestration, which more properly refers to an orchestrator’s, composer’s or (arranger’s) craft of employing instruments in varying combinations.
I love how this definition imbues the term “social instrumentation” with a certain richness and elegance. It is my intention for the software I am developing to be possessed of richness, elegance and function.
