Knowledge Virtualization of Future Social System Behavior through Computer Simulation

We are now well into the decade of an era in which simulation has become a most widely used technique, extensively applied in such diverse areas as social systems and space developments. In particular, this paper is devoted to exploring the impact of computer simulation on the social sciences. This article briefly reviews the use of simulation in sociology and goes on to consider in more detail specific areas such as system dynamics, cellular automata, simulation of social networks and organizations. It concludes with a consideration of the role of simulation in constructing agent-based models based on theories or social phenomena of social systems and it shows how an Agent Based Social Simulation might be implemented