Introduction

Humans are fundamentally social creatures. From birth we orient to other people, and as we develop we acquire abilities for interacting with one another ranging from expression and gesture through spoken and written language. As adults, we are exquisitely sensitive to the actions and interactions of those around us. Every day we make countless decisions that are shaped by our social context. Whether it's wrapping up a talk when the audience starts fidgeting, or deciding to forego the grocery shopping because the parking lot is jammed, social information provides a basis for inferences, planning, and coordinating activity.

When we move from face to face interaction to digitally-mediated interaction, however, everything changes. The subtle social cues that we use to guide and structure our real world interactions are mostly absent. In the digital world we are socially blind, and our attempts to communicate can be awkward and labor-intensive. Although the web is used by millions of people, reading a web page is primarily a solitary experience. Even when others are clearly present -- as in a chat room or on a conference call -- it is difficult to see who is present, who is paying attention, or who wishes to speak. Things that require little effort in face to face settings -- taking turns when speaking; noticing when someone has a question; seeing who is responding to whom -- require a lot of effort in online settings, if they are possible at all.

The premise of the Social Computing Group is that it is possible to design digital systems that provide a social context for our activities. Our approach does not try to imitate the real world (e.g., virtual reality or video); these approaches seem heavy-weight, and we note that new technologies often try (and ultimately fail) to imitate older technologies (thus movies initially imitated plays, and autos imitated buggies). Instead, we use "social proxies," minimalist graphical representations of the online presence and activities of people. Properly designed and implemented, we believe such representations can provide online contexts within which the social processes that underlie so much human behavior -- such as imitation, norming, and peer pressure -- can operate.

Our initial explorations have been embodied in online environments aimed at supporting communication among work groups. Our first system, Babble,* was a persistent, chat-like environment in which participants can see who is present, and make inferences about who is attending to the conversation. From 1998-2002, Babble was deployed to about two dozen groups within IBM, and studied in a variety of ways. Our second system, Loops, is a web-based successor to Babble which adds new capabilities such as shared tabs and bulletin boards, and runs on top of standard elements of the IBM infrastructure. Loops, as of January 2003, is being deployed to groups that are willing to allow us to study their use of the system. Our other activities involve work on online privacy and identity, studies of how groups and organizations 'remember' (e.g. consulting practices in IGS), and support for various types of structured on-line activity.

The remainder of this web site provides an overview of our projects, including an extensive set of publications on our work to date.

* Babble was created by David N. Smith in August, 1997 and soon after extended to include a social proxy. The Social Computing group was formed in 1998.