Social computing. Social computing is an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior and computational systems. It has become an important concept for use in business. It is used in two ways as detailed below. In the weaker sense of the term, social computing involves supporting any sort of social behavior in or through computational systems.
It is based on creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Thus, blogs, email, instant messaging, social network services, wikis, social bookmarking and other instances of what is often called social software illustrate ideas from social computing, but also other kinds of software applications where people interact socially. In the stronger sense of the term, social computing has to do with supporting “computations” that are carried out by groups of people, an idea that has been popularized in James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds. Rationale[edit] PLATO[edit] Can a Computer Model Prevent a War? The U.S. Army has awarded another $2 million to University of Arizona Professor Jerzy Rozenblit to fund phase 2 of a project to design intelligent software that can analyze the behavior and customs of political and cultural groups. In 2007, the Army awarded Rozenblit $2 million to fund the recently completed phase 1 of the Asymmetric Threat Response and Analysis Project, known as ATRAP.
Rozenblit holds the Raymond J. Oglethorpe Endowed Chair in electrical and computer engineering at the UA, and is head of that department. In the context of armed conflict, "asymmetric" describes opposing forces that differ in terms of size, strength, resources, tactics, armaments, strategy, technology or motivation. Forging peace between such disparate belligerents has confounded negotiators for centuries. The ATRAP software will enable intelligence analysts to build up three-dimensional maps of interactions between conflicting groups. Can a computer model prevent a war? DARPA, U.S. Army looking for social computing technology. Here is the Pentagonese for social network technology: “new technologies to rapidly create theoretically-informed, data-driven models of complex human, social, cultural, and behavioral dynamics that are instantiated in near-realtime simulations” The social computing phenomenon continues to spread, with news now emerging that Pentagon researchers are commencing work on a military project entitled Technologies for the Applications of Social Computing (TASC) —intended to “support leadership decision making at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.”
Lewis Page writes that this is not Facebook-style social computing: it is more like gas dynamics for human beings. The attempt to harness the power of networked social interactions for the benefit of U.S. national security comes from — where else — the ever-intellectually-restless DARPA. The Pentagon researchers seem to use the phrase “social computing” more to indicate a simulation or model than in the online-chumship sense. The U.S. DARPA, US Army seek 'social computing' tech. High performance access to file storage The social computing phenomenon continues to spread, with news now emerging that Pentagon warboffins are commencing work on a military project entitled "Technologies for the Applications of Social Computing (TASC)" - meant to "support leadership decision making at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels". But this is not Facebook-style social computing: it's more like gas dynamics for human beings.
The attempt to harness the awesome power of networked social interactions for the benefit of the US war machine comes, of course, from DARPA - the military research bureau so far beyond the bleeding edge it serves moon-on-a-stick as canapés. The US warboffins seem to use the phrase "social computing" more to indicate a simulation or model than in the online-chumship sense. According to a request for whitepapers issued this week, the agency wants nothing less than a sort of automated, rigorous science of people-en-masse: Psychohistoire (Asimov) Un article de Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre. La psychohistoire est une science fictive imaginée par l'auteur de science-fiction Nat Schachner puis développée plus largement par Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) dont le but est de prévoir l'Histoire à partir des connaissances sur la psychologie humaine et les phénomènes sociaux en appliquant une analyse statistique à l'image de la thermodynamique.
Asimov imagine le concept de psychohistoire dans une série de nouvelles écrites entre 1942 et 1944 et, encouragé par son éditeur, John Campbell, il le développe dans ce qui deviendra le Cycle de Fondation, un ensemble de romans qui décrivent l'histoire sur la longue durée de l'Empire Galactique. Asimov dit avoir été inspiré par l'Histoire de la décadence et de la chute de l'Empire romain écrite par Edward Gibbon à la fin du XVIIIe siècle et l'idéologie scientiste. Toujours selon les principes établis par Asimov, cette science permettrait de prévoir par le calcul les évolutions sociales.
Psychohistory by Isaac Asimov from Foundation. Paul Krugman's Asimov Inspiration. Paul Krugman's Asimov Inspiration During a PBS interview with this year's Nobel Prize winner in economics, Dr. Paul Krugman, I found out something I didn't know about Krugman. His career choice was inspired by the science fiction he read as a boy. (Paul Krugman, erstwhile psychohistorian) Jim Lehrer "When and why did you decide to become an economist in the first place? " Paul Krugman "That's a little embarrassing. I don't know how many of your viewers read science fiction, but there's a very old series by Isaac Asimov - the Foundation novels - in which the social scientists who understand the true dynamics save civilization.
Krugman is talking about the psychohistorians like Hari Seldon, who practiced the science of psychohistory; in the Foundation series, Seldon predicts the fall of the Galactic Empire and then works with a team to reduce the period during which civilization falls into barbarism to a single millenium. Here is how Isaac Asimov defines psychohistory in the novel: Asimov's Psychohistory May Be Possible. Asimov's Psychohistory May Be Possible Psychohistory, according to Isaac Asimov's 1950's Foundation series, says that "while one cannot foresee the actions of a particular individual, the laws of statistics as applied to large groups of people could predict the general flow of future events.
" It turns out that Indiana University researchers agree: Much as meteorologists predict the path and intensity of hurricanes, Indiana University’s Alessandro Vespignani believes we will one day predict with unprecedented foresight, specificity and scale such things as the economic and social effects of billions of new Internet users in China and India, or the exact location and number of airline flights to cancel around the world in order to halt the spread of a pandemic... ... advances in complex networks theory and modeling, along with access to new data, will enable humans to achieve true predictive power in areas never before imagined. (Psychohistorian Hari Seldon) Comment/Join discussion ( 6 )
Foundation by Isaac Asimov: Science Fiction in the News Stories. Science Fiction in the News Articles Related to material in Foundation by Isaac Asimov Space opera at its finest, from a man who really knew how to put a story together. Fast-paced story with interesting characters; its a different sort of story if you've only read Gibson and Sterling. You need to know what psychohistory is, so start reading. (Also, take a look at the inventive ideas from Asimov's second and third books in the trilogy - Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation.) Science fiction in the News articles describe real-world events that relate to the ideas and inventions in sf novels and movies. Select a news article: MulTicket Is Isaac Asimov's Idea Very cool concept - but it's been around for a while. Fast Entropy, PHE And Psychohistory.