Abstract:This paper discusses the history and the current status of social computing. The main concern here is how to apply theories and methods in complex systems and advanced computing technology in modeling, analysis, and decision support of complex social problems so that the static and linguistic knowledge in traditional social literatures and studies can use utilized in a digital and dynamic fashion. A theoretic framework for social computing research has been proposed based on the computational theory of complex systems, i.e., artificial societies, computational experiments and parallel systems.