Perspectives on Social Computing

Social computing has emerged as a broad area of research in HCI and CSCW, encompassing systems that mediate social information across collectivities such as teams, communities, organizations, cohorts, populations, and markets. Such systems are likely to support and make visible social attributes such as identity, reputation, trust, accountability, presence, social roles, expertise, knowledge, and ownership. Social computing is transforming organizations and societies by creating a pervasive technical infrastructure that includes people, organizations, their relationships and activities as fundamental system components, enabling identity, behavior, social relationships, and experience to be used as resources. In this talk, I argue for a broad definition of social computing, selectively review emerging applications, and discuss current research within and beyond IBM that is driving and is driven by the emerging vision of social computing.