Janice Brand, editor of CIO.com, pinged me and suggested I might be able to comment on and extend the real-time collaboration elements of a recently posted piece there. This is quite apropos of material I have been fuddling with all week, getting ready for the Corante Real-Time Collaboration Workshop at INBOX. In particular, I have become acutely aware that I have moved away from the conventional IT perspective of some hypothetical spectrum of collaboration options going from aynchrononous to synchronous, and instead have shifted to the perspective that slow-time is just a degenerate and inadequate approximation of real-time.

[from A Travel Guide To Collaboration]

Real-time technologies, such as Web conferencing and instant messaging, require collaborators to log on at the same time to, say, conduct an online meeting to review design specs or to resolve an issue by chatting through IM. Asynchronous tools, such as online collaborative workspaces and e-mail, allow collaborators to contribute on their own schedule, a particularly useful feature for managing projects that span time zones. Workspaces such as Microsoft's SharePoint, IBM/Lotus's Workplace and several industry-specific tools (including PTC's Windchill ProjectLink for the manufacturing industry, Agile for the high-tech industry and Freeboarder for the apparel industry) provide an electronic medium for collaborating, offering capabilities such as messaging, calendaring, document management and workflow automation. Users can see what their colleagues are doing, and everyone with appropriate access credentials can view—and add comments to—the latest version of a document.

Asynchronous tools also serve as a persistent, always accessible archive for discussions and document versions, keeping track of who decided what and when. This can be especially valuable for supporting sophisticated, long-term collaborations and for building trust. "In many ways, it creates trust if during any development process, you know that all information will be saved as a conversation," says Johnson. "Everyone will know how the product developed, how it changed. There's not a feeling that maybe someone did something or changed something and you didn't know."

The line between real-time and asynchronous tools is beginning to blur, however, as some collaboration tools are starting to offer both real-time and asynchronous/persistent functionality. Archiving is now possible with some IM products, for example, and Groove Networks supports real-time communications within its asynchronous, peer-to-peer workspace. IBM has added real-time functionality to its Workplace products. The presence awareness feature of IM (which indicates whether users are currently online) is also finding its way into some collaborative workspaces and meeting technologies. Convoq ASAP, for instance, initiates online meetings as soon as all are present.

I just don't agree with the mindset here, or the distinctions: its easy (first of all) to imagine that a real-time solution can provide a persistent log of all that has happened historically (like my Gush IM logs, or the really interesting Activity Manager technology from IBM (I will be posting about that tomorrow)). But more important, the idea that there is some high-order benefit in being able to collaborate asynchronously. Its always a crude approximation of real-time interaction, because the players are unavailable.

Say you and I are both working, online, at 2:09pm ET on 17 Nov 2004. I happen to be modifying some shared content we are both interested in (some project information or a file, whatever). You noticed through some extended notion of presence that I am editing some shared project content, which leads you to recall an idea you had, and you immediately IM me. We chat, and I modify what I was going to do to the content, in real-time. This is not in some way more complicated -- assuming the infrastructure exists -- on the contrary, the slow-time equivalent is infinitely more complex: when viewed from the social level. In the slow-time version, I make whatever modifications I had in mind; others read them, leading to whatever results and cascading actions. You get around to sharing your ideas with me later, but now for the ideas to bve realized we have to rewind the shared thread, herd the cats back together, revise the content, again, and so on.

From an IT viewpoint, this is easy, because it relies on a small set of primitive features: content editing, and asynch messaging (email). But from a social viewpoint, because people are not allowed to treat time as a shared space, they are divided from each other and forced to fumble through asynch interactions.

I reject the veiwpoint, and suggest that real-time should be the primary basis of every sort of human collaboration, and that slow-time introduces (in general) unnecessary complexities. Sure, there still will be the scnario when you want to leav a voice mail for someon, and not speak with them directly, because you are time constrained, or its a simple coordinative message ("yes, I am good for the call at 4pm"). But aside from these oddball cases, in general it is better to adopt the social viewpoint and drop the information technology mindset.

This reminds me a lot of an article today in USA Today regarding the fundamental differences between Boomers and "Gamers" -- those younger generations that have grown up with videogames as a core part of their world:

Kevin Maney

[...] on a deeper level, video games changed the way the Gamer Generation views life and work. "We thought we'd get back a few interesting correlations" between games and attitudinal shifts, Wade says. "But we got, like, 50 powerful patterns." [Mitchell Wade is co-author with John Beck of Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever]

The surprise: "I was stunned we didn't see a lot of negative effects," Wade says. "I thought they'd be bad team players and reckless."

Instead, the authors found traits that could be good or bad — depending on how you view them. Of course, there are variations among 90 million people, but the authors draw some general conclusions.

For instance, in video games, you're always the star. Once in the workforce, Beck and Wade found, gamers want a chance to be a star. Boomers might take that badly, thinking they have a bunch of prima donnas in the office. But gamers don't want to just do their jobs — they want to lead and stand out. And that can be a good thing.

In games, there's always a solution — you just have to find it. So gamers, as a generation, are more willing to try anything and pound on a problem, believing there is some way to solve it.

In games, failure is part of success. Anybody who tries a new game fails multiple times before getting it right, and that has made the Gamer Generation more willing to take risks.

Contrary to typical boomer parental beliefs, video games don't necessarily rot kids' brains. Games might actually be making the next generation smarter.

"Kids today don't play sandlot ball the way we did or run through the woods," Wade says. "Everything they do is structured. This is a replacement for that unstructured time, and it's a lot more intellectually stimulating."

In business, boomers who don't understand games or gamers could have a rough time as the Gamer Generation floods workplaces. If boomers see gamer traits as negative, the generations will clash — or at least boomers will miss a chance to manage, work with or compete effectively against gamers.

So Wade, 44, is a bit missionary about trying to save his generation from some sour fate, like forced early retirement.

"The first thing for boomers is to acknowledge there is a generation gap," he says. Then boomers can alter their strategies. Like, give gamers a chance to be a hero as motivation. Give gamers a problem and let them whack at it.

A few years ago, Bankers Trust trained its aspiring young currency traders the boomer way — in classrooms. But the Gamer Generation recruits hated it. Then the bank hired a firm to turn its training material into video games, and it turned the program around.

Does the new gap exist just because of video games? I mean, our generation gap wasn't due to any one thing that boomers shared and the previous generation didn't. It wasn't just rock music or television or highly sugared breakfast cereals or growing up in financial security. It was the mix of all of that.

"Games are only one part of the digital experience that changes the way (the next generation) learns, plays, interacts, spends their time and probably even thinks," says Don Tapscott, author of an earlier book, Growing Up Digital. Computers, the Internet and cell phones are all part of the new generation's powerful mix. "Rather than a generation gap, we have a generation lap — where kids are lapping their parents," Tapscott says.

Just like IM, videogames frame a new sensibility about our self-image and how we make sense of the world. "We make our tools, and they shape us." And when you "get real" you are changed, and not by the speed up of events, but more profoundly in what you think is important, the manner in which you interact with others, and how to respond to events in the world.