Schmidt and Bannon (1992) introduced the concept of common information space by contrasting it with technical conceptions of shared information: Cooperative work is not facilitated simply by the provisioning of a shared database, but rather requires the active construction by the participants of a common information space where the meanings of the shared objects are debated and resolved, at least locally and temporarily. (Schmidt and Bannon, p. 22) A CIS, then, encompasses not only the information but also the practices by which actors establish its meaning for their collective work. These negotiated understandings of the information are as important as the availability of the information itself: The actors must attempt to jointly construct a common information space which goes beyond their individual personal information spaces. . . . The common information space is negotiated and established by the actors involved. (Schmidt and Bannon, p. 28) This is not to suggest that actors’ understandings of the information are identical; they are simply “common” enough to coordinate the work. People understand how the information is relevant for their own work. Therefore, individuals engaged in different activities will have different perspectives on the same information. The work of maintaining the common information space is the work that it takes to balance and accommodate these different perspectives. A “bug” report in software development is a simple example. Software developers and quality assurance personnel have access to the same bug report information. However, access to information is not sufficient to coordinate their work.
The emergence and widespread use of personal computers and network technologies has seen the development of interest in the use of computers to support cooperative work. This volume presents the proceedings of the seventh European conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). This is a multidisciplinary area which embraces both the development of new technologies and an understanding of the grounding of CSCW technology in organizational practices. These proceedings contain a collection of papers that encompass activities in the field, including distributed virtual environments, new models and architectures for groupware systems, studies of communication and coordination among mobile actors, studies of cooperative work in heterogeneous settings, studies of groupware systems in use in real-world settings, and theories and techniques to support the development of cooperative applications.The papers present emerging technologies alongside new methods and approaches to the development of this important class of applications. The work in this volume represents the best of the current research and practice within CSCW.
The collection of papers presented here will appeal to both researchers and practitioners alike as they combine an understanding of the nature of work with the possibility offered by new technologies.
