Challenges and Perspectives for Cooperative Work on the Web

This paper investigates some of the issues which will determine the viability of the world-wide web as an infrastructure for cooperative work. In fact, taking a weak definition of collaboration, the web is already a very successful collaborative environment. In addition, it is already being used as the basis for experimental and commercial groupware. The paper takes this as a starting point and uses analytic methods developed in the field of computer-supported cooperative work to investigate the reasons for the web’s present success, its strengths and weaknesses as a platform for CSCW, and prospects for future development.