This group, from http://www.SocialTechnology.Org, is for the discussion, collaborative development, and free distribution of Social Technology, the technological or engineering counterpart to the the social sciences. It stresses "genuine solutions" to social problems, treating their underlying causes, not the symptoms -- no more band-aid solutions!

At least one university does make this important distinction, but most teach social technology in their social science departments. If you are creating a new university, or restructuring an existing one, please consider having social technology departments within your faculty of engineering.

A science asks and answers questions about "what" and "why", but technology is "the collection, study, invention and refinement of tools and techniques", and therefore asks and answers "how" questions and accumulates "how to" knowledge.

Any time we DO anything we make use of "how to" knowledge, and even science itself is an application of how-to knowledge -- the all-important "scientific method" is, of course, a method (or collection of methods) and the word 'method' is just a synonym for 'technique'.

Law, government, business, finance, research, development, education, and almost anything else that DOES something within and for human society is a collection of tools and techniques applied for social or societal purposes, and are thus social technology. But almost all of these social tools and techniques are "lo-tech".

The goal of SocialTechnology.Org is new, appropriate, "hi-tech" social technology. Like everything else that is hi-tech, this new social technology is ultimately based on something mathematical, although we try to avoid mathematical symbols and jargon in this mailing list and on our many webpages.

The best new social technology will be based on mathematical stuff: the use of collaborative filtering, graph theory and combinatorial optimization, group theory and topology.