kreed@deakin.edu.au

Social research builds increasingly on innovations that might be called 'smart' or 'intelligent' technologies, incorporating various forms of artificial or machine intelligence. These technologies have the potential, to be applied to most facets of the research process, including bibliographic searching; literature mapping; automated reasoning; theory representation; data analysis; report writing; and natural language processing.

This paper reviews some key developments in computer science, linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science including, for example:

• Intelligent agents
• Cognitive aspects of questionnaire design
• Distributed projects
• Fuzzy logic
• Neural networks, genetic programming and machine learning
• Language technology

The paper then discusses some implications for the future of social research, and depicts some of the possibilities by sketching out examples of projects based on multiple, integrated smart technologies.

Dr. Ken Reed
Social and Organisational Life Data Archive
Deakin University

Dr. Steven McEachern
University Of Ballarat