1.0.5- Is -Collaborative Technologies- an Oxymoron

Is -Collaborative Technologies- an Oxymoron?

Initially, collaborative technologies were so complex, expensive and difficult to use that they were, themselves, barriers to collaboration and got in the way of interactions for everyone but the most tech savvy. These technologies have advanced significantly over the past decade. Today, most collaborative tools help rather than hinder the social interactions inherent in collaboration. These interfaces—often browser-based have become more standardized and intuitive, requiring little or no training. They support multiple media (audio, video, and data), are becoming less expensive (or in many cases – free), and can integrate with a wide variety of content and object types (e-mail, multi-media, avatars, web pages, mash ups of public and private data, etc.). 

Marshall McLuhan, once referred to as the "Oracle of the Electronic Age", is perhaps best known for uttering the phrase that became the book title: The Medium is the Message [2]. For collaboration technologies, the medium has frequently gotten in the way of the message. These technologies should add to and support people in the way they work most naturally, instead of demanding that people change their work behaviors to adapt to (the limitations of) the technology. Collaborative technologies should provide a common context or framework within which to interact.

This trend towards computers supporting human behaviors called “human-based computing” is a trend CS has been tracking for the past several years. This trend is the confluence of sophisticated and flexible hardware and software with faster connection speeds that finally creates support for people to work in a natural way, rather than bending their behavior around the system.

 The user of these tools today has a much better user experience, many of the tools require little learning, and if they are offered as a service, there is often little or no cost to set up and try.  Most of today’s new tools, Collaboration 2.0 tools, are in synch with the tidal wave of user generated content that we are all drowning in, and they support many of the multimedia modalities demanded of collaboration today.

Collaboration technologies are beginning to support what we call “on-demand collaboration,” where one can move fluidly and naturally from solo work to teamwork (asynchronously or in real time with team members or partners in other organizations). This is one of the holy grails of collaboration and we are almost there. On-demand collaboration could be seen as a subset of the “human-based computing trend” in that the ultimate goal of the software is to support people in their computer-mediated interactions.

CS research since the beginning of the millennium has shown the emergence of real-time collaboration (RTC) technologies that not only support IM/Chat but also support interactions in any or all of audio, video and data conferencing mediums. In addition, these tools are browser-based, easy to use and support both ad-hoc and planned events. These technologies are not yet where they need to be, but are rapidly heading in the right direction.

  I (Stewart) can attest to the ease of use. Although I have been toting a lap-top since 1988 I am anything but tech savvy. Over the past few years I have been able to navigate the use of webinar technology to deliver a twelve week virtual training program delivering the communication skills I will speak about in Part II of this book. The technology enabled a rich collaborative learning experience for people who were located all over the country. That said, they were all self-selected volunteers who wanted to learn and change.  

However, the interactions of people often form a complex system, and collaboration is an emergent characteristic of those systems. That is, the system is complex and cannot be easily reduced to its component parts (usually people), and an emergent characteristic like collaboration springs from the plethora of interactions of the parts in that complex system and can’t always be either predicted or managed.

  As David mentioned earlier, the CIO’s have been using these tools in their organizations, and have focused on the technology. In the future there will be better predictability and management within the human conversational aspect of collaboration when we begin incorporating tutorials and especially designed communication protocols that require a certain kind of engagement.