(2003-01-03) Peter Me On Collaboration Ware

Peter Merholz, at the Super Nova conference, blogged about Worse Is Better applying to Collaboration Ware, but conversely concerned about over-decentralization in Intranet implementation. But I wonder, with email, IM, SMS, and even to some extent, weblogs, we'll see a "communication-centered computing" platform emerge. See the nice long comments.

Entry also links to Beyond Couch Potatoes paper at First Monday. The fundamental challenge for computational media is to contribute to the invention and design of cultures in which humans can express themselves and engage in personally Meaningful activities. Cultures are substantially defined by their media and tools for thinking, working, learning, and collaborating. New Media change (1) the structure and contents of our interests; (2) the nature of our cognitive and collaborative tools; and, (3) the social environment in which thoughts originate and evolve, and mindsets develop. Unfortunately, a large number of new media are designed from the perspective of seeing and treating humans primarily as consumers. In personally meaningful activities, the possibility for humans to be and to act as designers (Hacker) (in cases in which they desire to do so) should be accessible not only to a small group of "high-tech scribes," but rather to all interested individuals and groups. While the core message of the article applies to cultures, mindsets, media, technologies, and educational systems in general, my examples are mostly drawn from computational media, and more specifically from human computer interaction as a particular domain... The future of how we live, think, create, work, learn, and collaborate is not out there to be "discovered" - it has to be invented and designed... Computational media can have the same fundamental impact on our individual lives and our societies as reading and writing had to move us from oral to literal societies. The true contribution of computational media might be to allow all of us to take on, or incrementally grow into a designer role in areas that we consider personally meaningful and important so we do not mind additional efforts.