Stop connecting computers. Start connecting people.
The term Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) was coined by Greif and Cashman in 1984. It emerged as a response to increasing research and development activities regarding the augmentation of group work by computers. The level of activity had been steadily increasing since the late 1960's, but significantly increased in the 1980's when personal computers entered the offices. The massive growth in telecommunications allowed these machines to be linked through local and even wide area networks which further stimulated the work. It provided a whole new market for application developers who came up with tools supporting the networked work group (Wilson [1991]). Once computers were connected, it was due time to start connecting people through their linked machinery.
In this subsection of my work, I concentrate on working together by using the computer. As cooperative work is the target area of CSCW it is only logical to start with a discussion of the essence of cooperative work, leaving the specific computer supported aspects aside for a moment.
These come into play when CSCW and groupware, the multiuser software supporting cooperative work are examined. Discussed are the perils and pitfalls of computer support for group work.
Finally, the scope for the remainder of this work is delineated by turning to computer supported collaborative writing, a specific domain within the field of CSCW.
Sjoerd Michels, Tilburg, The Netherlands