“What is “collaborative computing?” It is the term that, we believe, will replace the traditional notion of “groupware.” Groupware as we know it today focuses on the asynchronous aspect of human collaboration. E-mail, discussion lists, list servers, and similar software products help people to electronically exchange information. In other words, these products electronically extend a letter, a fax, and a filing cabinet.
Definition: Collaborative computing is a fertile mélange of technologies and techniques which facilitate people working together via computer-assisted means.
To communicate over a distance in real time, we invented the phone system. A phone conversation is an example of synchronous communication. The phone system serves us wonderfully. Is it the telephone the best possible real-time communication medium, though? It depends. Phones are ideal for person-to-person conversation, but when it comes to exchanging technical information, phones have information transfer limitations. Technical support over a telephone is imprecise and often difficult. It is much easier to share technical information in a shared web browser than try to describe the same content in a telephone conversation.
In general, communication with strong visual component, with content ranging from technical to marketing, is ill suited for telephone communication.
Collaborative computing is a term describing a variety of activities where people interact with one another using desktops, laptops, palmtops, and sophisticated digital cellular phones. As computers are best at handling data and representing information, person-to-person communication is enriched by an ability to share, modify, or collaboratively create data and information.
We believe collaborative computing is the future of the Internet. The Internet will evolve from its current role as a channel for information dissemination to a person-to-person communication medium. This is precisely where CollabWorx sees its role: we build, deploy, and support tools for personal interaction over the Internet.”
Traditional Collaboration – Groupware & Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
The long-standing history of office automation has lead to the classification of collaborative computing into two broad categories: (1) groupware ; and (2) computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) . Defined as “computer-based systems that support groups of people engaged in a common task (or goal) and that provide an interface to a shared environment” , the primary focus of groupware is to provide a group interface for a shared task. In a similar vein, computer-supported cooperative work systems deal with how technology (specifically computer systems) can assist in the work process. These two areas are often combined into a single focus which addresses how groups of people can work together in a (logically) shared environment with the assistance of computer support.
Groupware systems span a spectrum of usage patterns and the illustrated time/place matrix is a well-known taxonomy. Systems which support synchronous activity are known as real-time groupware while those that support asynchronous activity (such as electronic mail) are non-real-time. Synchronous systems therefore offer a concurrent shared environment in which multiple users can interact simultaneously while asynchronous systems provide for serial non-shared interaction. As a rule, most groupware systems primarily support interaction along only one such dimension.
Groupware systems have also been classified based on application functionality, including the categories of message systems, multi-user editors, computer conferencing, intelligent agents, (group) decision support and coordination systems. An overview and discussion can be found in . Systems often span multiple categories in this taxonomy and can be used in an overlapping manner by a group to accomplish its goal. Consequently, collaboration can be seen as a blend of activities used in varying ways across multiple participants. Therefore, the utility of a collaborative environment is directly influenced by its openness and flexibility such that it can support the integration of different technologies to support various collaborative tasks.
To support this diversity within collaboration, several different perspectives exist in the application of groupware technologies; these include: distributed systems, communications, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence and social theory. For practical purposes, many systems (with some exceptions, such as ) support group work according to a particular approach and with their own unique focus. Such an example would be workflow management systems ( WfMS ), which generally aim at assisting business or government groups in communicating, coordinating and collaborating with a special emphasis on the facilitation (i.e., automation and/or augmentation) of business processes. To do so, WfMS deal with temporal aspects such as activity sequencing, deadlines, routing conditions and schedules. They are typically “organizationally aware,” containing an explicit representation of organizational processes and often provide a rigid work environment consisting of roles, associated activities and applications. Such systems are usually highly valuable in their organizational context but are either built-for-purpose or require significant customization to meet the needs of a particular group.
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