Sociologia na Microsoft - A Technology Review publicou uma entrevista com um dos meus ídolos, o Marc Smith (eu conheci ele em Vancouver, no ano passado) sobre como é sua atuação de sociológo em uma empresa de tecnologia. Há partes interessantíssimas sobre como há todo um novo campo aberto para a pesquisa social dentro da iniciaitiva privada.

Pretty much all of the future of computing is social computing. What makes people come back to a keyboard? The answer is many things, but I'll argue that it's other people. [Studies have shown that] people who didn't send or receive much e-mail stopped using the Net as much as those who sent and received more. When someone's message is waiting in your inbox for you to reply to it, there's an enormous moral force that trumps advertisements for cheap airplane tickets or other impersonal messages. If you look out on the Net, it's all about people who are brought together. Name the really interesting thing on the Net that's not made out of people. At the moment, I think the world of the Internet is all about sociology.

Smith também fala das ferramentas utilizadas e do grande interesse no estudo de redes sociais e comunidades virtuais.