How can we work together?
Collaboration, while a buzzy new concept, suffers from some of the same drawbacks as earlier iterations of audio and video conferencing. These drawbacks have next to nothing to do with technology: IP has seen to that. Instead, they are all about how we trust (or mistrust) technology, how we use it (or abuse it) – and how we choose it.
Shared working and ‘teamworking’ are mainstays of the human resources jargon in the modern enterprise. It’s fair to say that most people would not get very far in today’s companies if they eschewed either of these concepts. But introduce a layer of the latest technology and attitudes can change alarmingly.
It’s odd. There seems to have been no natural progression from audio communication to its (presumably superior) video counterpart. It is worth remembering that mass market video telephony was being pushed long before mass market mobile telephony was treated seriously. Since then? Hare beats tortoise. Nor has the tortoise managed to hop onto the hare’s back despite the fact that mobile technologies now support a range of video applications.
The debate over this psychological and emotional resistance to technology in the specific area of conferencing could possibly be brought to an end by ‘collaboration’. Increasingly, this is an IP-enabled concept.
