Dave Weinberger is blogging bits of the valuably fecund “Reboot” conference this week. Included is a nice summary of Jaiku-founder Jyri Engestrom’s talk. In the past, he’s been very influential among social design folk for pushing the idea of “social objects” — a powerful notion that helps clarify why people do what they do socially (usually it’s around some artifact, subject or object).

This time, Jyri pulls the frame out a bit to look at the bigger picture of social patterns and talks about “nodal points” — there’s more explanation on the post, but here’s a taste:

“Social peripheral vision” lets you see what’s next. If you are unaware of other people’s intentions, you can’t make plans. “Imagine a physical world where we have as much peripheral information at our disposal as in WoW.” Not just “boring update feeds.” Innovate, especially on mobiles. We will see this stuff in the next 24 months. Some examples: Maps: Where my friends are. Phonebook: what are people up to. Email: prioritized. Photos: Face recognition.