Social computing is an interdisciplinary field that studies how technology can facilitate social interaction and communication. It has three main goals: 1) Develop better social software to facilitate online interaction; 2) Computerize aspects of human society through modeling and simulation; 3) Forecast how changing technologies may impact social behavior. Social computing draws from fields like sociology, computer science, and applied physics. It covers topics such as social networks, recommendation systems, virtual worlds, and using technology to study social dynamics. Methods include social network analysis, simulation, and data mining of social media. Learning social computing would help information scientists develop technologies that consider social factors and behaviors.