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« Networked Publics | Main | EU policy: Can Social Software facilitate the inclusion of immigrants and minorities? »
7 May 2007
I will be giving a talk today as part of the Cambridge Colloquium on Complexity and Social Networks titled: “Life in the Network: The Coming Era of Computational Social Science.”
My key assertions (following from themes I have touched on in this blog) are that:
1) An increasing fraction of human behavior (especially relational behavior) leaves substantial digital traces—whether in the form of phone logs, e-mail, instant messaging, etc. (See Ben Waber’s recent post on the netgov blog on the instrumentation of human behavior.)
2) Increased computational power allows the analysis of these digital traces—e.g., through natural language processing, statistical analysis of massive (millions of individuals) longitudinal data, etc.
3) The preceding two points suggest (I argue) that we are on the precipice of dramatic new insights into collective human behavior. I say that noting that it is not inevitable that those insights will be produced. Human institutions tend to be fairly conservative. Will the relevant data become openly available for research? Can we work across the silo’s, which this work would require? Can we build the infrastructure to facilitate the types of collaborations and capacities needed?
In any case, I will be talking about this, with illustrations from four ongoing projects, today, 12:00-1:30, in the Fainsod room at the Kennedy School, Harvard.
Posted by David Lazer at May 7, 2007 9:00 AM