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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

New Lab for Social Computing at RIT

I've always been fascinated by 'action at a distance' - there's a sense in which computer networking, like radio, is a striving for god-like status. Consequently I'm very pleased to be a member of the Advisory Board for Liz Lawley's new Lab for Social Computing at RIT.

Liz modestly claims to have been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time as the social computing revolution has gathered pace, but seeing how it keeps happening, plus the esteem in which she's held (for example on Corante) and taking a glance at her new advisory board tells you she has an eye for innovators and is likely to create something special in Rochester.

My personal stake in all this is the observation that what's called 'social computing' is actually the dynamic of the massively connected age working through into a new plane of the science of computing. It takes me an hour or so to explain exactly what I mean (most recently in Perth).

The summary is that connectedness has gone from geek-thing to global paradigm in around 10 years and we're now seeing second- and third-order effects that just assume that "the network is the computer". Social Computing is largely the class of third-order effects once society gets connected, and RIT stands every chance of starting one of the prime venues for exploring those effects.

posted at 4:14 PM (UK) | |