Abstract
CSCW is in an advanced state of fragmentation. The acronym now, by and large, denotes widely diverging research programs that, apart from a shared name, have little or nothing in common. This situation obviously calls for clarification. Recounting the prehistory and formation of CSCW, the paper shows that CSCW, as a distinct research program devoted to the development of new technologies on the basis of understanding actual cooperative work practices, arose in response to the crises in which ‘Computer Mediated Communication’ (CMC) and Office Automation' (OA) had landed by the late 1980s. The paper finally discusses the reasons why CMC, although superseded as a research paradigm by the practice-oriented program of CSCW, has gained a new lease on life in CSCW and thus why CSCW has become fragmented.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bannon, Liam J.: ‘Computer-Mediated Communication’, in D. A. Norman and S. W. Draper (eds.): User Centered System Design, Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersey, 1986, pp. 433–452.
Bannon, Liam J.; Niels BjØrn-Andersen; and Benedicte Due-Thomsen: ‘Computer Support for Cooperative Work: An appraisal and critique’, in Eurinfo′88: 1st European Conf. on Information Technology for Organisational Systems, 16–20 May 1988, Athens, Greece, 1988.
Bannon, Liam J.; and Kjeld Schmidt: ‘CSCW: Four characters in search of a context’, in ECSCW′89, 13–15 Sept. 1989, Gatwick, London, London, 1989, pp. 358–372.
Bannon, Liam J.: ‘Perspectives on CSCW: From HCI and CMC to CSCW’, in EW-HCI′92: Proc. Int. Conf. on HCI, August 1992, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1992, pp. 148–158.
Barber, Gerald R.; and Carl Hewitt: ‘Foundations for office semantics’, in N. Naffah (ed.): Office Information Systems, INRIA/North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1982, pp. 363–382.
Bignoli, Celsina; and Carla Simone: ‘AI Techniques for supporting human to human communication in CHAOS’, in ECSCW′89, 13–15 Sept. 1989, Gatwick, London, London, 1989, pp. 133–147.
Bjerknes, Gro; Pelle Ehn; and Morten Kyng (eds.): Computers and Democracy: A Scandinavian Challenge, Avebury, Aldershot, 1987.
Bowers, John M.; and Steven D. Benford: ‘Part one: The concept of CSCW’, in Bowers and Benford (eds.): Studies in Computer Supported Cooperative Work: Theory, Practice and Design, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1991, pp. 1–2.
Crocker, David H., et al.: ‘RFC 733: Standard for the format of ARPA network text messages’, 21 November 1977. <ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc733.txt>
De Cindio, Fiorella, et al.: ‘CHAOS: a knowledge-based system for conversing within offices’, in W.Lamersdorf (ed.): Office Knowledge: Representation, Management and Utilization, Elsevier North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1988.
Ellis, Clarence A.: ‘Information control nets: A mathematical model of office information flow’, in: Proc. ACM Conf. on Simulation, Measurement and Modeling, August 1979, Boulder, Colorado, ACM, New York, 1979, pp. 225–239.
Ferry, Georgina: A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Teashops and the World's First Office Computer, HarperCollins, London, 2003. (Paperback ed., 2004).
Fikes, Richard E.; and D. Austin Henderson, Jr.: ‘On supporting the use of procedures in office work’, in Proc. 1st Ann. Conf. on AI, 18–20 August 1980, Stanford Univ., AAAI, 1980, pp. 202–207.
Finholt, Thomas A.; and Stephanie D. Teasley: ‘Psychology: The need for psychology in research on computer-supported cooperative work’, Social Science Computer Review, vol. 16, no. 1, Spring 1998, pp. 40–52.
Gerson, Elihu M.; and Susan Leigh Star: ‘Analyzing due process in the workplace’, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, vol. 4, no. 3, July 1986, pp. 257–270.
Gillies, James; and Robert Cailliau: How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2000.
Greif, Irene: ‘Overview’, in I. Greif (ed.): Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: A Book of Readings, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, Calif., 1988, pp. 5–12.
Hardy, Ian R.: The Evolution of ARPANET email, History thesis paper, Univ. of Calif., Berkeley, 13 May 1996. <http://www.ifla.org.sg/documents/internet/hari1.txt>
Harper, Richard; John A. Hughes; and Dan Shapiro: ‘Working in harmony: An examination of computer technology in air traffic control’, in ECSCW′89, 13–15 Sept. 1989, Gatwick, London, London, 1989, pp. 73–86.
Heath, Christian C.; and Paul Luff: ‘Collaborative activity and technological design: Task coordination in London Underground control rooms’, in ECSCW′91, 24–27 Sept. 1991, Amsterdam, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1991, pp. 65–80.
Hewitt, Carl: ‘Viewing control structures as patterns of passing messages’, Artificial Intelligence, vol. 8, 1977, pp. 323–364.
Hiltz, Starr Roxanne; and Murray Turoff: ‘The evolution of user behavior in a computerized conferencing system’, CACM, vol. 24, no. 11, November 1981, pp. 739–751.
Hiltz, Starr Roxanne; and Murray Turoff: ‘Structuring computer-mediated communication systems to avoid information overload’, CACM, vol. 28, no. 7, July 1985, pp. 680–689.
Hinds, Pamela J.; and Sara Kiesler (eds.): Distributed Work, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2002.
Kerr, Elaine B.; and Starr Roxanne Hiltz: Computer-Mediated Communication Systems: Status and Evaluation, Academic Press, Orlando, etc., 1982.
Kreifelts, Thomas: ‘DOMINO: Ein System zur Abwicklung arbeitsteiliger Vorgänge im Büro’, Angewandte Informatik, vol. 26, no. 4, 1984, pp. 137–146.
Kreifelts, Thomas, et al.: ‘Experiences with the DOMINO office procedure system’, in ECSCW′91, 24–27 Sept. 1991, Amsterdam, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1991, pp. 117–130.
Kuhn, Thomas S.: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962; 2nd ed. 1969). Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1969.
Lakatos, Imre: ‘Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes’, in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.): Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1970, pp. 91–196.
Licklider, J. C. R.: ‘Man-computer symbiosis’ (IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, March 1960). In R. W. Taylor (ed.): In Memoriam: J. C. R. Licklider, 1915– 1990. Digital Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, Calif., 1990, pp. 4–11.
Licklider, J. C. R.; and Welden E. Clark: ‘On-line man-computer communication’, in AFIPS Spring Joint Computer Conf., vol. 21, 1962, pp. 113–128.
McCarthy, John: ‘Reminiscences on the history of time sharing’, Stanford Univ., Winter or Spring 1983. <http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html>
Myer, Theodore H.; and David Dodds: ‘Notes on the development of message technology’, in Berkeley Workshop on Distributed Data Management and Computer Networks, 1976, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, 1976, pp. 144–154. – LBL-5315.
Olson, Gary M.; and Judith S. Olson: ‘Groupware and computer-supported cooperative work’, in J. A. Jacko and A. Sears (eds.): The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, New Jersey, 2003, pp. 583–595.
Palme, Jacob: ‘You have 134 unread mail! Do you want to read them now?’, in IFIP Conf. on Computer Based Message Services, Nottingham, Elsevier, New York, 1984, pp. 175–184.
Panko, Raymond R.: ‘The outlook for computer mail’, Telecommunications Policy, June 1977, pp. 242–253.
Pankoke-Babatz, Uta (ed.): Computer Based Group Communication: The AMIGO Activity Model, Ellis Horwood Publishers, Chichester, 1989.
Postel, Jon: ‘RFC 808: Summary of computer mail services meeting held at BBN on 10 January 1979’, 1 March 1982. <ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc808.txt>
Rodden, Tom A.; and Gordon Blair: ‘CSCW and distributed systems: The problem of control’, in ECSCW′91, 24–27 Sept. 1991, Amsterdam, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1991, pp. 49–64.
Suchman, Lucy A.: ‘Systematics of office work: Office studies for knowledge-based systems. Digest’, in Office Automation Conf., 5–7 April 1982, San Francisco, 1982, pp. 409–412.
Suchman, Lucy A.: ‘Office procedure as practical action: Models of work and system design’, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, vol. 1, no. 4, October 1983, pp. 320–328.
Suchman, Lucy A.; and Eleanor Wynn: ‘Procedures and problems in the office’, Office: Technology and People, vol. 2, 1984, pp. 133–154.
Suchman, Lucy A.: Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1987.
Turoff, Murray: ‘Delphi conferencing: Computer-based conferencing with anonymity’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 3, 1972, pp. 159–204.
Turoff, Murray: ‘Human communication via data networks’, SIGCAS Computers and Society, vol. 4, no. 1, May 1973, pp. 15–24.
Vallee, Jacques F.: ‘The FORUM project: Network conferencing and its future applications’, Computer Networks, vol. 1, 1976, pp. 39–52.
Van Vleck, Tom: ‘The history of electronic mail’, 1 February 2001. <http://www.multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html>
Wynn, Eleanor H.: Office Conversation as an Information Medium, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1979.
Zisman, Michael D.: Representation, Specification and Automation of Office Procedures, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1977.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag London Limited
About this paper
Cite this paper
Schmidt, K. (2009). Divided by a common acronym: On the fragmentation of CSCW. In: Wagner, I., Tellioğlu, H., Balka, E., Simone, C., Ciolfi, L. (eds) ECSCW 2009. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-854-4_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-854-4_14
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-84882-853-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-84882-854-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)