Working together

The Internet is changing our lives. Lives are changing the Internet. So far so good.

Cheap travel to other places is changing our lives. Our lives are changing the places cheap travel takes us to.

How are these two phenomena working together in changing our lives?

One example is the dispersed but growing band of people able to create a balanced life-style for themselves and their families by distance working and cheap travel. I count myself amongst this happy band.

Another example is the growing number of examples of international, often global, collaborations within and across the fields business, leisure and research. I am working with a group of people scattered across the globe, developing a project to study one small community.

I recognise that some of these lives and collaborations are entirely virtual or on-line. But I am more interested in the way the Internet, (and other means of communication) can be combined with really meeting people to enhance our lives in the round; life, work, leisure, family and community.

We plan to set up a field study, observing a collaborative community in action across all the means of communication they use, from one to one meetings through seminars and telephone, to on-line content management tools. The fields of ethnography as well as computer science are reference points.

Has anyone done this before?