Working Smarter: Computers As Stimulants for Human Creativity

Computers have traditionally been used as tools to raise efficiency. To realize the true value of computers, one should view them as tools to enhance human creativity. Nearest-neighbor matching, knowledge-based systems, and machine induction are examples of technologies that can now be used by social scientists to analyze data and identify patterns of behavior. These analytical techniques are based on human cognitive models but work in ways that have important differences—complementing the way humans think and thereby extending their analytical abilities—enabling social scientists to work not just faster but smarter. Keywords: computing, creativity, cognition, human judgment, rule-based systems, social science.