What is the difference between social networking and social engineering?

[edetwi]

Do you feel like it is becoming harder to tell the difference? With all the billions of ad dollars, can the network engineers possibly resist becoming social engineers to make people push the right buttons at the right time?
Silly Naguru. Describe it, don't parse it. Are you a computer?

[Naguru]

Philosophy is simple and easy. Even a child can understand.

One is 'networking' and the other one is 'engineering'. Both are social.

[Doctor P]

social networking

the process of communicating with other users on a website that allows its users to upload and share information and build relationships

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dicti...networking

social engineering

the use of theories from social sciences to develop policies to improve society

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dicti...ngineering

http://www.answers.com/topic/social-engi...al-science


Social networking is an internet facility. Social engineering is an academic course taught at universities.

[broadgrade278]

Naguru never gives anything but a ridiculous answer. They are usually worse than this, way off topic, and so stupid you know he just wants the two points.

But capitalists who are advertising, like the one you see to the right side of this screen, are not doing 'social engineering'. Social security and Obama-care are forms of social engineering. So was the denial of rights in the southern states to freed slaves. And so, too, the government forcing us to use our corn for fuel, but cutting electric use by outlawing incandescent bulbs by 2014, so that it can also force us to use electric cars without creating any more electricity. Before you know it, we will be using candles as they did in the novel Anthem. That entire little book was about the social engineering of people to make them forget the concept of 'self'; after all, that is the best way to control people, by making them forget they are individuals, e.g., making them think they are immoral to have desires.

No, the capitalists who make us push the right buttons are simply using the technology of their day. In Henry Ford's day he made us by the Model T by designing it the way most people needed it. You could even jack up the back end and use the transmission to power your farm equipment. How convenient--just like the advertising to the right of you that targets your every need, whim, and desire.

Social networking is just the modern form of the phone. My little brother used to spend 2-3 hours a day talking to his girlfriends on the phone. Now, his children text and use Facebook.