Social Dynamics in the Age of the Web

The web mediates interactions among distant people on a scale that was never possible in the physical world. From vast social networks, to grass-root amateur creativity and the creation of encyclopedic knowledge, a collective intelligence is at work in ways that differ from traditional communities in style, intensity and effectiveness of interaction. I will present the results of several studies of social dynamics in the web, as well as mechanisms we have designed to access this collective intelligence while improving users experiences with digital content.

Presenter(s)

Bernardo Huberman is a Senior HP Fellow and the Director of the Information Dynamics Lab at Hewlett Packard Laboratories. He is also a Consulting Professor in the Department of Applied Physics at Stanford University. Before joining HP Labs he worked for many years at Xerox Parc.

For the past eight years his research has concentrated on the phenomenon of Web, with an emphasis on the design of novel mechanisms for discovering and aggregating information. More information on his work is available at: http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/people/huberman.