Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Introduction
The introversion and isolation of early computer use has given way to
lively online communities of busily interacting dyads and bustling crowds
of chatty users. The pursuit of human connections has prompted millions
of users to join listservs, visit chat rooms, and fill newsgroups with useful
information and helpful responses, peppered with outrageous humor. But as
in any human community there is also controversy, slander, and pornography.
The World Wide Web (Chapter 16) has dramatically expanded the communications
richness with colorful graphics and sometimes too-dazzling Javascript animations.
The web is sometimes derided as a playground, but serious work and creative
endeavors are enormously facilitated by enabling easy flow of information.
Goal-directed personalities quickly recognized the benefits of electronic
cooperation and the potential to live in the immediacy of the networked
global village. The distance to colleagues is no longer measured in miles
but in intellectual compatibility and responsiveness; a close friend is
someone who responds from 3000 miles away within 3 minutes with the necessary
reference to finish a paper at 3 A.M.
The good news is that computing, once seen as alienating and antihuman,
is becoming a socially respectable and interpersonally positive force. Enthusiasts
hail cooperative technologies, groupware, team processes, coordination science,
and other communal utopias, but there may be a dark side to the force. Even
28,800 baud is not enough to send a handshake or a hug. How does intimacy
survive when mediated by the remoteness in time and physical space? Can
laughter and tears mean the same thing for electronic-dialog partners as
for face-to-face partners? Will the speedup in work improve or reduce quality?
Can cooperative systems be turned into oppressive tools or confrontive environments?
New terminology and metaphors are appearing daily. Although the conferences
on computer-supported cooperative work have established CSCW
as a new acronym, even the organizers debate whether it covers cooperative,
collaborative, and competitive work. The focus of CSCW researchers
is on the design and evaluation of new technologies to support the social
processes of work, often among distant partners. The implementers and marketeers
quickly gravitated to groupware as a term to describe the team-oriented
commercial products (Baecker, 1993). For researchers, new paradigms and
fresh ideas are flowing from psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists
(Vaske and Grantham, 1990; Sproull and Kiesler, 1991). For educators, the
movement towards social construction theories of learning is fostered by
the World Wide Web and classroom tools and techniques (Hiltz, 1994; Harasim
et al., 1995; Shneiderman et al., 1995).
Networked communities have become talk-show topics in which social commentators
celebrate or warn about the transformational power of CSCW. Howard Rheingold's
(1993) popular book on Virtual Communities tells charming and touching
stories of cooperation and support in the San Francisco-based WELL. At the
same time clinical psychologists analyze network addictions and deconstruct
manufactured cyber-identities (Turkle, 1995).
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