ABSTRACT
The characteristics of each technology influence sociological work by making it easier to organize the research differently, or by making other kinds of data analysis easier. Hypertext is valuable for other purposes. Some of those are explored by John P. Walsh and Andrew C. Gordon in their paper, "Intellectual Property and New Technology: Some Possible Futures in Sociology." James Danziger's work reminds us that sociology as a profession can make a strong contribution to the discussion of the impact of computers. The chapter presents some potential contributions of artificial intelligence to the attention of a sociological audience by describing its use in international relations, a subfield of political science. Much sociological information is available only in the form of text. The possibilities of computer text processing have seemed so dramatic that some brave sociologists have gone out on a limb and actually made predictions.
