Working apart together: foundations for component groupware

This thesis is the culmination of five years of Working Apart Together. As a research theme, it struck me in 1993 that Working Apart Together was not only a way of working that groupware systems were designed to support, but also a principle that could be applied within the groupware systems themselves. As far as I can recollect, the original ideas that laid the basis for this thesis went something like “If groupware systems are designed to support people working apart together, thus enabling them to deliver better products or services to customers, why, then, not have different groupware applications themselves working apart together, thus delivering a better groupware service to their human users? After all, if we don’t expect people to be omnipotent, why should we expect this from groupware applications?