Parece que las ciencias de la computación intentan dar pistas
sobre el comportamiento de las redes sociales. La CV Mística
puede ser un buen caso de estudio.
        LG

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/science/31essa.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=sl
ogin

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Essay: Computing, 2016: What Won’t Be Possible?

By STEVE LOHR
Published: October 31, 2006

Computer science is not only a comparatively young field, but also
one that has had to prove it is really science. Skeptics in academia
would often say that after Alan Turing described the concept of the
“universal machine” in the late 1930’s — the idea that a computer
in theory could be made to do the work of any kind of calculating
machine, including the human brain — all that remained to be done
was mere engineering.

The more generous perspective today is that decades of stunningly
rapid advances in processing speed, storage and networking, along
with the development of increasingly clever software, have brought
computing into science, business and culture in ways that were
barely imagined years ago. The quantitative changes delivered
through smart engineering opened the door to qualitative changes.

Computing changes what can be seen, simulated and done. So in
science, computing makes it possible to simulate climate change
and unravel the human genome. In business, low-cost computing,
the Internet and digital communications are transforming the
global economy. In culture, the artifacts of computing include
the iPod, YouTube and computer-animated movies.

What’s next? That was the subject of a symposium in Washington
this month held by the Computer Science and Telecommunications
Board, which is part of the National Academies and the nation’s
leading advisory board on science and technology. Joseph F. Traub,
the board’s chairman and a professor at Columbia University,
titled the symposium “2016.”

Computer scientists from academia and companies like I.B.M. and
Google discussed topics including social networks, digital
imaging, online media and the impact on work and employment.
But most talks touched on two broad themes: the impact of
computing will go deeper into the sciences and spread more
into the social sciences, and policy issues will loom large,
as the technology becomes more powerful and more pervasive.

Richard M. Karp, a professor at the University of California,
Berkeley, gave a talk whose title seemed esoteric:
“The Algorithmic Nature of Scientific Theories.”

Yet he presented a fundamental explanation for why computing
has had such a major impact on other sciences, and Dr. Karp
himself personifies the trend. His research has moved beyond
computer science to microbiology in recent years. An algorithm,
put simply, is a step-by-step recipe for calculation, and it is
a central concept in both mathematics and computer science.

“Algorithms are small but beautiful,” Dr. Karp observed. And
algorithms are good at describing dynamic processes, while
scientific formulas or equations are more suited to static
phenomena. Increasingly, scientific research seeks to
understand dynamic processes, and computer science, he said,
is the systematic study of algorithms.

Biology, Dr. Karp said, is now understood as an information
science. And scientists seek to describe biological processes,
like protein production, as algorithms. “In other words, nature
is computing,” he said.

Social networks, noted Jon Kleinberg, a professor at Cornell,
are pre-technological creations that sociologists have been
analyzing for decades. A classic example, he noted, was the
work of Stanley Milgram of Harvard, who in the 1960’s asked
each of several volunteers in the Midwest to get a letter to
a stranger in Boston. But the path was not direct: under the
rules of the experiment, participants could send a letter only
to someone they knew. The median number of intermediaries was
six — hence, the term “six degrees of separation.”

But with the rise of the Internet, social networks and
technology networks are becoming inextricably linked, so
that behavior in social networks can be tracked on a scale
never before possible.

“We’re really witnessing a revolution in measurement,”
Dr. Kleinberg said.

The new social-and-technology networks that can be studied
include e-mail patterns, buying recommendations on commercial
Web sites like Amazon, messages and postings on community sites
like MySpace and Facebook, and the diffusion of news, opinions,
fads, urban myths, products and services over the Internet. Why
do some online communities thrive, while others decline and
perish? What forces or characteristics determine success?
Can they be captured in a computing algorithm?

Social networking research promises a rich trove for marketers
and politicians, as well as sociologists, economists,
anthropologists, psychologists and educators.

“This is the introduction of computing and algorithmic processes
into the social sciences in a big way,” Dr. Kleinberg said,
“and we’re just at the beginning.”

But having a powerful new tool of tracking the online behavior
of groups and individuals also raises serious privacy issues.
That became apparent this summer when AOL inadvertently released
Web search logs of 650,000 users.

Future trends in computer imaging and storage will make it possible
for a person, wearing a tiny digital device with a microphone and
camera, to essentially record his or her life. The potential for
communication, media and personal enrichment is striking. Rick
Rashid, a computer scientist and head of Microsoft’s research
labs, noted that he would like to see a recording of the first
steps of his grown son, or listen to a conversation he had with
his father many years ago. “I’d like some of that back,” he said.
 “In the future, that will be possible.”

But clearly, the technology could also enable a surveillance
society. “We’ll have the capability, and it will be up to
society to determine how we use it,” Dr. Rashid said.
“Society will determine that, not scientists.”
Nearby Wed Nov 1 14:03:54 2006