A young up-and-coming researcher named Clay Shirky has just published Flaming and the Design of Social Software, which I think is useful in that it talks about the role software has in creating the culture of a community. In the context of Tom discovering Movable Type made his posts longer and less frequent (better thought out?) and Nick talking about the social responsibilities of developing software, it seems like we’re in the midst of a full-fledged bout of geek self-examination. Hooray!