Michael LoBue writes: Last Friday the venerable magazine SCIENCE published an article entitled Computational Social Science; one of the co-authors is Sinan Aral, IIIP Academic Advisor and professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business.
Why does this matter? Why is this an event worth commenting on? Well, for the co-authors it is important to bring attention to an emerging field of scientific and scholarly investigation. For society at large it represents important advances in approaches to more deeply understand how people collaborate to achieve outcomes that matter to them — in other words, we can peel back more layers of the onion that underpins innovation in small and large groups, especially large groups, and gain deeper understanding about redefining and measuring productivity in our massively connected world.
The authors pose a set of critical questions in this article, some of which relate to:
- Who should own the data being generated by online activity?
- Should there be restrictions on how such data is used?
- What interaction patterns predict highly productive groups and individuals?
- Can the diversity of news and content we receive predict our power or performance?
If you’re interested in understanding the potential for this new area of research and the obstacles confronting these pioneers, you should get this article from the SCIENCE Magazines site (click here…).
