GIG, the Global Identities Group, was one of the first projects supported by the Stanford Humanities Research Network. GIG is a group of five scholars at five different institutions who are colleagues and friends seeking to collaborate on the authoring of a book. Various subsets of the team had worked together in the past, but for five to co-author a book when not co-located was a very new challenge. They had begun working by sending drafts back and forth to each other via email. Under SHRN, they met face to face and began experimenting with text messaging and VoIP. The plan was to use a group wiki to develop their drafts and share information with each other. This, in conjunction with the real time communication tools allowed them to work either synchronously or asynchronously--affording more options for modes of collaboration.
AIRPLANE → TELEPHONE → EMAIL → INTERNET (big changes)
The internet introduces tremendous opportunity and complexity. Whereas email was adopted very quickly, it is not well-suited to the sort of communication necessary for managing a large project. The internet and the explosion of web-based tools allows multiple modes of communication at once.
The technology does not make collaboration possible, it simply presents opportunities for collaboration.
COMMUNICATION, PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION
This requires an unexpected level of coordination and management.