CollabWorx:

Home : Technology : Collaborative Computing

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.

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 conversation.

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.

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