That leaves mobility. As we’ve noticed: the Monks aren’t going anywhere, but the world is, perhaps increasingly, on their doorstep. The distance between the Island and the rest of the world is less and less. In social science terms, this is a question of ‘time/space compression’. Even in their isolation, the Monks knew about the events of September 11th on the day, almost experiencing it. Time and distance are, apparently, an increasing irrelevance.

Of course social scientists need to dig deeper than this, the question is how? When social scientists become interested in a topic, such as geographical isolation and the Information Age, they look for evidence that supports or refutes their ‘hypotheses’. In order to find evidence, researchers use certain ‘methods’, such as interviews, questionnaires, observations and even participating with others in their everyday activities. They also include forms of research like compiling statistics or measuring different kinds of activity. The idea is to build as fair and accurate a picture of the topic under investigation as possible.

The Open University course Social Science In Action teaches the fundamentals of social science research, based around the topic of the Information Society.