History of Collaboration
The dictionary defines collaboration as “to work jointly together to accomplish a common goal.” Throughout history human beings have collaborated. The old folk sayings, “Two heads are better than one” and “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” are testimony to the human belief that collaboration is a good thing.
In the beginning there was the campfire. People congregated to keep warm and safe from the darkness. Tribe members sat and discussed the next day’s hunt or new ways to cross a river.
As the social group got larger, meeting became more formal and the town meeting was born. But, not content to only work with people close by, smoke signal, drums and flashing mirrors were used for centuries in different parts of the world for real-time long distance communication. Sometimes that communication was sharing news and other times deciding how to do something.
Since the invention of the written word, carrier pigeons and written letters were used to communicate beyond the range of human senses.
Then in the 19th century, the telegraph was invented. For the first time, simultaneous two-way long-distance communication was possible beyond the range of human hearing or sight. The next major collaboration tool was the telephone.
In the 1980s, groupware such as Lotus Notes that allowed people to share calendars and other documents and internal email was commonly used by business during that time. The baby bells developed video conferencing using telephone lines during the later part of the decade.
In the early 1990s, bulletin boards and accessed via a modem sprang up all over the place where people could express opinions, ask questions and generally discuss whatever they wanted to talk about. Major companies began providing customer support by bulletin board.
Then in the mid-1990s, we entered the internet age. Originally only available to large corporations and government agencies, email became a universal tool. Bulletin boards moved to the internet and became user forums.
In 2000, the first online software that allowed multiple people to edit a single document over the internet became available. Instant messaging became commonplace and has replaced the telephone for international coloration.
Blogs have emerged as both a broadcast and collaboration media. Wiki now allows multiple people to edit a forum post (called stubs) that other people make in discussion forums for casual communication. Whiteboards and Nandu are more formal collaboration tools used for business collaboration that allow simultaneous editing of a single document by team members.
As things are at present, communication and collaboration have brought us to a global marketplace.
What’s next in this perennial search for better and faster methods of communication and therefore collaboration?
A New Technology
A brand new emerging technology called Groupware 2.0 is designed to allow you to use your email address as the basis for all of your online collaboration.
Just imagine Bob is an employee of ABC Corporation. As he sits down at his desk with his morning coffee, he opens his email client. He checks his to do list and sees he needs to schedule a meeting with Jack and his project group at JLK Corporation and wants to setup a video conference during the meeting with Fred from XTZ Company.
Using his email client equipped with groupware 2.0 he opens up both Jack and Fred’s work calendars to see when both of them are available. Next he accesses a conference room schedule at JLK Corporation and books the meeting room the proper time slot in both his and Jack’s names.
He takes a sip of hot coffee then he opens the IS video conferencing schedules at both JKL corporation an XYZ company and books the two-way video conference for the day of the meeting so Fred can participate. Finally he sends an email to everyone involved informing them of the completed arrangements. Then he sits back and starts reading his email while finishing his still warm cup of coffee.
Imagine…Mary just got the older kids off to school. She sits down at the kitchen table and opens up her email client. She logs into the grocery store and checks the daily specials, checks off the things she wants, pushes a button, placing her order and setups up the delivery time on the store’s delivery schedule.
Next she accesses the pediatrician’s appointment schedule to set up an appointment for the baby. The only time available next week conflicts with her day to drive the car children’s school car pool. So, she opens the car pool schedule to see who listed themselves as alternates for that day, checks each member’s personal calendar and finds an available substitute and schedules them to take her place. Doing in a few minutes what used to take hours,
What About The More Distant Future?
As I gaze into my crystal ball, I see small sub dermal transceiver implants similar to the ones currently used for credit card information or child and pet tracking devices keyboards and telephones.
Artificial intelligence will be built into our computers. All we will need to do it talk to the computer when we want to know something or “write” something. But with our implants the need to talk out loud will be optional. The data we request will be displayed using three-dimensional holographic displays.
In the future, our computers will be our personal assistants, always available to remind us of what we need to do, set everything up for us, assist us every step of the way.
The end result of these strides in both communication and technology will be a truly global information driven economy and I expect to see it my lifetime.