It’s a fact: the digital traces of our 21st-century lives are everywhere online, in social interactions, and myriad transactions. Northwestern University professor Noshir Contractor researches what drives and feeds social and knowledge networks. Using examples from business, science, and engineering communities, disaster responses, public health networks, multiplayer games, and virtual worlds, Contractor illuminates the global role Internet science plays in helping us understand our networks, and what those networks tell us about the human experience today and tomorrow.

Recorded Sunday, October 16, 2011 at McCormick Auditorium, Northwestern University.