Social hardware

Social Hardware is a branch of Social Technology and related in a natural way to the branch called Social Software. It may be said to have begun with the most primitive writing implements, but the most conspicuous examples are the telegraph and telephone, especially these systems before they used computers at all. The term has entered popular use to describe electronic communications devices beginning with the cellphone, which is usually much more than a telephone.
The term Social Hardware appears, perhaps for the first time, in a 1979 book by Johnston and Gummet. Since then the term has entered popular culture, most often associated with personal communications devices, beginning with the cellphone.
Very often social hardware is associated with social software. A writing tablet and stylus are hardware, alphabets are software. As noted in , the use of currency such as a dollar bill as money is software, but one most not neglect the considerable difficulties of producing reliable coins and bills which will resist the attempts of counterfeiters. A mint produces the coinage and currency, which are items of hardware, while it is their use in society which makes the monetary system software.
Modern pieces of Social Hardware include the landline telephone network and the mobile telephone network (cellphones together with the cellphone towers which support them). These may also be described as Information Technology, a more common term, but Information Technology includes hardware for the transmission of all types of information, not just interpersonal communication. It is the use of telephones as interpersonal communication devices which make them social hardware.

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