The development of enormous computational power and the capacity to collect enormous amounts of data has proven transformational in a number of scientific fields. The emergence of a computational social science has been slower than in the sciences. However, the combination of the still exponentially increasing computational power with a massive increase in the capturing of data about human behavior makes the emergence of a field of computational social science desirable, but not inevitable. The creation of a field of computational social science poses enormous challenges, but offers enormous promise to achieve the public good. The hope is that we can produce an understanding of the global network on which many global problems exist: SARS and infectious disease, global warming, strife due to cultural collisions, and the livability of our cities. That is, can sensing our society lead to a sensible society?
To solve these problems will require trading off privacy versus convenience, individual freedom versus societal benefit, and our sense of individuality versus group identity. How will we decide what the sensible society will look like? This conference brings together the wide array of individuals who are working in this emerging research area to discuss how we might address these global challenges, and to evaluate the potential emergence of a field of "computational social science."
This conference is co-chaired by David Lazer of Harvard and Sandy Pentland of MIT and is co-sponsored at Harvard by the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the Program on Networked Governance, and at MIT by the Legatum Center and the Living The Future project.
The Institute
for Quantitative Social Science
at Harvard University
1737 Cambridge St. Cambridge, MA 02138
p: (617) 496-2450 f: (617) 496-5149
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