In today’s world of information technology and speedy internet, it would seem as though humans are more connected to each other now than ever before. When a universe full of people are instantly able to find and send each other messages through apps like Facebook and other social media, it should follow that people are able to socialize and collaborate more effectively than would have been the case pre-internet. In my experience, however, collaboration with others is always better in person than in virtual spaces.
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My experience with online collaboration comes from time spent with sites such as Google docs, Github, and Wikipedia. These collaborative tools allow users to build content as a collective over long distances, rather than having to physically meet in one location in order to work together. While tools like these are great for building on ideas which have already been planned out, I find it much harder to generate original ideas and get feedback for those ideas in the online medium. For this purpose, meeting face to face with groups is still very effective when it comes to collaboration. Generally whenever I have had to work in groups in the past, we would first plan out a time to meet in person in a single location in order to formulate a plan for the project. Then after the meeting, we would begin work on the project through these online tools, and always tended to follow the plan set out in the meeting. I believe there are multiple reasons for why offline collaboration feels more effective than online, and it has to do with human psychology, as well as the current state of computers.
One of the reasons why in-person collaboration is more effective, is due to our history as a species: “We humans were interacting face to face long before we developed language, and today even when we're talking; it isn't what we say that matters most” (Colvin). Due to the hidden complexities of body language, and the extra amount of expressive power we have when communicating face to face with another person, it takes an incredible amount of analysis and information in order to perfectly capture all of the subtleties of direct human communication. Current computers and applications that connect us over the internet are unable to handle and reproduce this kind of information fast enough, and so the result is a communication medium that loses out on some expressive capability. To make up for this loss of information, means such as emoticons for messaging have been introduced in order to try and improve the online communication experience. These canned expressions acts as a poor substitute for the real thing, however, and the potential for misunderstandings remains higher over online communication. The other aspect that is often missed in online collaboration is the potential to form real bonds with other members of a group. It may be easy to find others to chat with online, due to the presence of online forums and chat rooms, but in general people who meet online won’t consider each other “friends” until they have actually met up offline. As of now, computers and the internet have become an increasingly useful tool for enabling collaboration to build off of in-person meetings, but I believe it won’t be much longer before online collaboration catches up to the real world in terms of capability to communicate.
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One of the reasons I believe this to be true, is due to something called the “bandwidth” problem in computing. Since the internet is built on top of computing devices, and people can only access the internet through computers, the idea of how to create the best form of user input comes into play. For the most part, our interactions with computers take place through the use of a keyboard and mouse. While these forms of input are “good enough” for many of the programs we have built our computers to run, they are limiting in terms of the speed at which someone can turn their thoughts into content that appears on the screen. New forms of input have the potential to disrupt this bandwidth problem such as the invention of virtual reality, however, I doubt that new technology will ever completely replace offline collaboration. Steve Jobs, one of the greatest visionaries of the 21st century, described his affinity for face to face meetings even while helping to invent the smart devices that would push ever more people into the online space: “‘Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face to face meetings,’ reports Walter Isaacson in his Jobs bio” (Colvin).
Group dynamics is the other reason why I believe offline collaboration is important in terms of coming up with an idea, as well as establishing roles for members in a collaborative effort. With Tuckman’s 5 stages, which we learned about in class, there is a necessary period of introduction and conflict that must occur before a group can really start achieving at the highest level. These periods correspond to the stages of “Forming” and “Storming”, where having a strong level of communication between group members should be a requirement for moving onto the later stages of “Norming”, and then ideally the stage of “Performing”. By ensuring that a group collaborates offline frequently as well as online, I believe that these stages can be surpassed.
All in all, collaboration can be effective in both offline and online circumstances, but in my opinion, offline collaboration is still more effective in terms of ensuring high levels of communication in a group. In the future, it is possible computing may improve to the point at which it is possible to completely collaborate in an online space, and have it be as though it were occurring offline, but in the near term this does not seem practical (or affordable). My hope is that humanity can move past today’s problems of social isolation through online mediums, and instead find a future where working online actually brings people closer together.
Class readings (citations):
Geoff Colvin:
Tuckman’s 5 Stages:
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