Abstract
If handled appropriately, data about Internet-based communication and interactivity could revolutionize our understanding of collective human behaviour. Duncan Watts, who with Steven Strogatz published the Nature paper that introduced the 'small world' phenomenon in 1998 (later familiar as 'six degrees of separation'), puts in a word for the social sciences in this week's Essay. Starting from the premise that the major problems facing humanity today are social and economic, Watts constructs an early bid for social science as the science of the twenty-first century. Work on social networks and the data collecting power of the Internet are strong foundations for a new science that could revolutionize our understanding of collective human behaviour.
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