Socially Aware Computing

The advances of pervasive computing technologies significantly enhance the capabilities for data capture. Using the sensing data to understand human behavior, mobility, and activity, and ultimately help to solve social problems is a great challenge in the information era. This paper introduces a new emerging research topic in computer science-Socially Aware Computing. The new paradigm aims at leveraging the large-scale diverse sensing devices deployed in human daily lives to recognize individual behaviors, discover group interaction patterns, and support community communication and collaboration. The paper discusses the concept, origin, model, and research topics of Socially Aware Computing. It also reviews the current stage of the field in five aspects: system and application, data sensing, behavior and interaction analysis, social theory and law verification, and social interaction support.