Hey! My name is Sam the socialite, if you have any questions about the LSC, I can help you out!

I am a big fan of social computing and can help you out whenever you need me. Common questions that people ask when they come to the Lab for Social computing website are about the following topics:

If you have a question and can't seem to find an answer by looking through the page, try a quick search. If you still can't find an answer, why don't you just 'Ask Sam' and I will get back to you as soon as possible!

Enjoy your stay!

So do you want to know what Social Computing actually is?

A few years ago, you could only imagine having the ability to communicate cheaply and instantly with people across the globe, having the ability to keep in touch, when friends and family are simply too far away. Allowing the world to shrink so that no matter how distant someone physically is, they are always right next door. Instanty you can share the moments in your life that matter to you with the people that you care about.

Large and small corporations have meetings that everyone in the company can attend. Every member of this meeting can contribute to the project at hand. Using a group whiteboard, every person can add a piece, here and there, to create something larger than anything a single person in the group could create.

This is the power of social computing. Twenty years ago these ideas were not even close to becoming a reality. Currently, technologies exist that can do these simple tasks and much more. Millions of people can stay connected using instant messaging clients and e-mail services. Companies across the world, are no longer limited by international borders, distance, or by the time consumption of travel. Information can be shared user to user, or group to group with great simplicity. The study of social computing examines how this works, why it works, and how we as a intellectual community can make these technological advances better.

Social computing, or social software, is a term that has emerged over the past three years to describe the use of networked computing tools for facilitating interpersonal and organizational interactions. Terms used for similar academic work in the past included computer-mediated communication (CMC) and computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW).

Social computing, however, encompasses not only the study of the participants that is the hallmark of CMC, or the group and process focus of CSCW, but also the development of new tools to work in increasingly networked and ubiquitous computing environments, and the acknowledgement of the growing need for social components in a wider range of computing tools (particularly information search and management). Social computing draws as much on the fields of communication, sociology, psychology, and even political science as it does on technology and computing.

The technology industry is keenly aware of the importance of this emerging field-for example, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, and FX/PAL have all established Social Computing groups, and Intel Research's "People and Practices" has begun to focus on social computing topics. Major technology conferences like O'Reilly's Emerging Technologies Conference regularly incorporate a track on social computing, and publications ranging from Communications of the ACM to Educause Review have run cover stories and features on social computing.