The "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), [is] exploring the development of new technologies to rapidly create theoretically-informed, data-driven models of complex human, social, cultural, and behavioral dynamics that are instantiated in near-realtime simulations. These technologies would leverage the entire social science community and provide a rich test bed for establishing the empirical validity of alternative theories, and identifying gaps in knowledge that cannot be accounted for by the current body of social science theory. Other important technologies of interest include the formalization and semantic representation of social science theories, the semantic integration of disparate types of social science data, techniques for analyzing these data, and efficient computational techniques for rapid data processing. DARPA refers to this range of technologies as “Technologies for the Applications of Social Computing (TASC).” DARPA anticipates all these technologies would be integrated to develop a flexible, modular social simulation system that integrates sound social science theory with real world data, that facilitates a wide spectrum of military and intelligence applications, and that supports reliable, real-world decisions at multiple levels of analysis."
From: DARPA-SN-09-20 Request for Information (RFI): Technologies for the Applications of Social Computing (TASC)
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