We are interested in designing systems that support communication and collaboration among large groups of people over computer networks. We begin by asking what properties of the physical world support graceful human-human communication in face-to-face situations, and argue that it is possible to design digital systems that support coherent behavior by making participants and their activities visible to one another. We call such systems “socially translucent systems ” and suggest that they have three characteristics—visibility, awareness, and accountability—which enable people to draw upon their social experience and expertise to structure their interactions with one another. To motivate and focus our ideas we develop a vision of knowledge communities, conversationally based systems that support the creation, management and reuse of knowledge in a social context. We describe our experience in designing and deploying one layer of functionality for knowledge communities, embodied in a working system called “Babble, ” and discuss research issues raised by a socially translucent approach to design. Categories and Subject Descriptors: H.1.2 [Models and Principles]: User/Machine Systems—Human factors; Human information processing; H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and

Economists have long been ambivalent about whether the discipline should focus on the analysis of markets or should be concerned with social interactions more generally. Recently the discipline has sought to broaden its scope while maintaining the rigor of modern economic analysis. Major theoretical developments in game theory, the economics of the family, and endogenous growth theory have taken place. Economists have also performed new empirical research on social interactions, but the empirical literature does not show progress comparable to that achieved in economic theory. This paper examines why and discusses how economists might make sustained contributions to the empirical analysis of social interactions.

this paper has been provided by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (General and Strategic grants), Bell Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Information Technology Research Centre. We dedicate this chapter to science-fiction personage Judith Merril who net surfed for fifty years until her death in Sept., 1997.

As humans we live and interact across a wildly diverse set of physical spaces. We each formulate our own personal meaning of place using a myriad of observable cues such as public-private, large-small, daytime-nighttime, loud-quiet, and crowded-empty. Unsurprisingly, it is the people with which we share such spaces that dominate our perception of place. Sometimes these people are friends, family and colleagues. More often, and particularly in public urban spaces we inhabit, the individuals who affect us are ones that we repeatedly observe and yet do not directly interact with – our Familiar Strangers. This paper explores our often ignored yet real relationships with Familiar Strangers. We describe several experiments and studies that lead to a design for a personal, body-worn, wireless device that extends the Familiar Stranger relationship while respecting the delicate, yet important, constraints of our feelings and relationships with strangers in pubic places.

The goal of the proposed work is to develop a theory of design for building on-line social environments. The underlying hypothesis is that in order to foster the development of virtual communities and cultures, the environment must provide the means to communicate social cues and information: the participants must be able to perceive the patterns of activity and affiliation that reveal the structure of a community and to have a fluid and subtle vocabulary for conveying cultural information. The theoretical foundation for the research is drawn from traditional studies of society and culture and from observations of contemporary on-line systems. Starting with an analysis of the fundamental differences between real and virtual societies - most notably, the presence and absence of the body - the first section examines the ways social cues are communicated in the real world, discusses the limits imposed on online communities due to their mediated and bodiless nature, and explores directions...

Telemurals is an abstract audio-video installation that seeks to initiate and sustain interaction between and within two remote spaces. Our goal is to improve the social aspects of casual mediated communications by incorporating events into the design of the communication medium that encourage people to engage in interaction when they otherwise would not. We call these events social catalysts, for they encourage people to initiate and sustain interaction. In this paper we discuss the design process and goals of our first Telemurals link between two public spaces, the building of Telemurals, and an ethnographic study describing how the system affected interaction between and within these two spaces based on the theories discussed in this paper.

This dissertation addresses the question, whatwill be the fate ofcommunityand social relations as a result of the growth of new home-based information and communication technologies? How have social networks, social capital and community involvement been affected by the rise of personal computers, the Internet and computer mediated communication (CMC)? Will the Internet reconnect the disaffiliated, or will CMC only contribute to a further disengagement of American community life? Survey and ethnographic data from along-term study of "Netville," a wired suburb near Toronto, are used to investigate the effects of advanced communication technology on social relationships. Netville was one of the first residential developments in the world to be built from the ground up with a broadband high-speed local computer network. Netville provided a unique opportunity to observe the effects of advanced information and communication technology on people's daily interactions with family, friends and neighbours. The "wired" residents of Netville are compared with a similar group of non-wired residents who lived in the same neighbourhood, but who were never connected to the local computer network. Greater involvement with friends, family and neighbours is linked to use of CMC. Internet use is associated with high levels of in-person and telephone contact, the exchange of support, the growth of personal network and increased community involvement.

A number of potential advantages of industry agglomeration—or spatial clustering—have since long been identified in the research literature, notably related to shared costs for infrastructure, the build up of a skilled labour force, transaction efficiency, and knowledge spill-overs leading to firm learning and innovation. We identify two shortcomings of existing research on the clustering phenomenon. First, the abundance of theoretical concepts stands in sharp contrast with the general lack of work aiming to validate these mechanisms empirically and the contradictory evidence found in recent empirical work in the field. Secondly, there is a lack of a unified theoretical framework for analyzing spatial clustering. In an attempt to remedy the second shortcoming, this paper investigates the nature of the cluster from a knowledge creation or learning perspective. We argue for the need to establish a specific theory of the cluster where learning occupies center stage. The basic requirements for such a theory of the cluster are discussed. Two main components of such a theory are identified: it must explain the existence of the cluster on the one hand and its internal organization on the other.

Urban Atmospheres captures a unique, synergistic moment – expanding urban populations, rapid adoption of Bluetooth mobile devices, tiny ad hoc sensor networks, and the widespread influence of wireless technologies across our growing urban landscapes. The United Nations recently reported that 48 percent of the world's population current live in urban areas and that this number is expected to exceed the 50 percent mark world wide by 2007 [1]. In developed nations the number of urban dwellers is even more dramatic – expected to exceed 75%. Current studies project Bluetooth-enabled devices to reach 5.4 billion units by 2005 – five times the number of mobile phones or Internet connections [2]. Mobile phone penetration already exceeds 80 % of the population in places like the European Union (EU) and parts of Asia [3]. WiFi hardware is being deployed at the astonishing rate of one every 4 seconds globally [4]. We argue that now is the time to initiate inspirational research into the very essence of these newly emerging technological urban spaces. We desire to move towards an improved understanding of the emotional experience of urban life. This paper describes Urban Probes – a lightweight, provocative, intervention methodology designed to rapidly deconstruct urban situations, reveal new opportunities for technology in urban spaces, and guide future long term research in urban computing. We also describe a completed Urban Probe exploring urban trash.

Introduction A combination of Internet use and home computing have increasingly moved activities once almost exclusively ascribed to the public realm into the private home. It is increasingly possible to work, shop and participate in leisure activities all from within the refuge of the private residence. Computer-mediated communication allows for greater connectivity to resources and information, but simultaneously it may be disconnecting us from members of our social networks and reducing public participation. As globally connected as the Internet is the technology necessary for participation is inherently local, primarily available at work, school and increasing from home. Will the location of new information and communication technology in the home isolate us from our local surroundings? How will computer-mediated communication effect social relations at the local level? Netville The ideal setting to research the effects of home-centered communication and i