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.

We present a conceptual framework for location-aware community systems and results from two studies of how socially-defined places influence people’s information sharing and communication needs. The first study identified a relationship between people’s familiarity with a place and their desire for either stable or dynamic place-related information. The second study explored the utility of various system features highlighted by our conceptual framework. It clarified the role of place information in informal social interaction; it also showed that people valued, and were willing to provide information such as ratings, comments, and event records relevant to a place. These preliminary findings have important implications for the design of location-aware community systems. In particular, they suggest that such systems must integrate information about places with data about users’ personal routines and social relationships.

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political opinion, social simulation. Abstract: Our aim is to review the network concept and its relevance on theories of public opinion formation. For this purpose, after discussing social and policy networks, we are reviewing certain network theories of (i) collective action and (ii) voting choices and preferred modes of political participation. Finally, we are presenting a network simulation of public opinion formation that generalizes Axelrod’s adaptive culture model and it is based on both convergent and divergent communicative processes. 1

Mobile social software is currently designed and conceived to afford serendipitous social interactions in densely populated urban environments. In this paper, I argue that these systems create a more homogeneous representation of the city by encouraging users to socialize more exclusively with those they already know and by privileging a type of urban experience based on consumption and entertainment. I describe several design strategies drawn from the arts that might help these systems offer a more heterogeneous view of the city. Author Keywords Mobile social software, homophily, tactical intervention, critical design, interpretation ACM Classification Keywords H5.3. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):

Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems. To my wife, Libby, and to my family, whom I love beyond words… Computational methods combined with traditional empirical techniques offer a powerful new approach to the study of human performance. Scholars engaged in the study of work group and organizational behavior are increasingly calling for the use of integrated methods in conducting research, including the wider adoption of computational models for generating and testing new theory. In this collection of three studies, I first review the state of modern computational modeling and find a steady increase in the incorporation of dynamic, adaptive, and realistic behaviors of agents in social network settings. However, my analysis suggests areas that can be addressed in the next generation of organizational simulation systems. I compare 28 models according to more than 200 evaluation criteria, ranging from simple representations of agent demographic and performance characteristics, to more richly defined instantiations of behavioral attributes, interaction with non-agent entities, model

Do my friends influence my investment behavior?