It is a great honor to have been invited to deliver the Ithiel de Sola Pool lecture. Professor de Sola Pool had a tremendous influence on scholarship and practice. His work describes the ways in which evolving technologies fundamentally alter communicative expectations and social outcomes. Years after their publication, works such as Technologies of Freedom (1984) continue to provide insight about how the networked communications are changing the world. Professor de Sola Pool's work is of great public value. In what follows, I want to focus our attention on the value of social science today.