Instructor:  Yiling Chen, Maxwell Dworkin 339, yiling@eecs.harvard.edu
TFs: Shaili Jain & TBD
Meeting time: Monday & Wednesday 1-2:30pm
Location: TBD

General Information

Social computing is a research area that is at the intersection of computational systems and social behavior. In this course, we focus on the interplay between computation and social behavior within decentralized collective systems, where computation is carried out by a group of people. Computation in social computing is broadly defined. It may refer to aggregation of dispersed information, creation of semantic labels for images, or the formation of reputations.

The Internet and network technologies make it possible and inexpensive to enable large-scale interactions of geographically distributed individuals.  Social computing systems have emerged to serve many different purposes. For example, Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) that allow participants to wager on outcomes of political elections can aggregate real-time information about elections. The ESP game provides an entertaining environment and players jointly label images as a byproduct of their play. Wikipedia, which can be edited collaboratively by users, is becoming an important online knowledge source. Such systems are both computational and social. The conflicts between computational and game-theoretic constraints give rise to many exciting research questions.

This seminar-style course will focus on recent progress in social computing, covering topics of prediction markets, computational social choice, reputation systems, peer production, script systems, and human computation.  The tools used are drawn from AI, game theory, CS theory, microeconomic theory, and optimization.