Back in 1999 — before Twitter and Facebook or virtual worlds like Second Life were a twinkle in anyone’s eye — Amy Bruckman was carving a pioneer’s path in online communities. The “multi-user domains” (MUDs) of the last millennium were bringing people together in new virtual ways, and they were an armchair anthropologist’s dream come true.

As Bruckman set out to understand these “identity workshops” where people could explore social or gender roles, she began to define what fostered the best engagement among people all over the world. Her pioneering work into this latest frontier led the young assistant professor at Georgia Tech to be named one of MIT’s “Innovators under 35” that year.

Today, Bruckman is again pioneering a new path — this time to the long-isolated island of Cuba.  

“We have just completed a qualitative study of how Cubans use the Internet, and are now working on a crowd-sourced information system to help,” says Bruckman, associate chair of academics for the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and co-primary investigator on the project with Chair Annie Antón. “Cuba is one of the most isolated countries in the world, but rapid change may be beginning. Currently, Cubans often have email but no web access. With our system, they’ll be able to email a question, and volunteers will email back answers. People outside Cuba can also ask questions of Cuban citizens. We hope both to help Cubans with their information needs and to increase mutual understanding.”

While the work involving a tropical locale — when virtual or not — may sound enticing, it is another recent project by Interactive Computing students that Bruckman considers among the most profound: studying how people (mis)understand intellectual property terms of service.

“Casey Fiesler and I found that people generally don’t read terms of service, and couldn’t if they tried — it would take too much time, and the average reading level is well above that of the typical Internet user,” says Bruckman, who was advisor to Fiesler (HCC '15) on the work. “In fact, our legal analysis shows that they are not all the same, and people are agreeing to strikingly different terms without realizing it.”

The research on this topic was awarded best paper at ACM’s Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing conference in March. Co-author Fiesler is now an assistant professor at University of Colorado at Boulder — one of Bruckman’s many students in nearly 20 years of teaching to go on to other heights.

“Amy is one of the smartest people I have ever met,” says PhD Student Michaelanne Dye (HCC). “She is genuinely interested in her students and committed to her role as an educator. As an advisor, she consistently challenges me to do my best work. It's an honor to study under someone who has been so foundational in the field of computing.”

Bruckman says it’s the students that make her most excited to come to work each day.

“I love my research and my students,” she says. “And I particularly enjoy teaching. I have terrific students and colleagues — smart, thoughtful, and doing great work.”

You can catch Bruckman each fall teaching “Computers, Society, and Professionalism” and the graduate class, “Design of Online Communities” in the spring — if she’s not corresponding with Cuba.