Collaboration software

Collaborative software or groupware is an application software designed to help people involved in a common task to achieve their goals. One of the earliest definitions of collaborative software is "intentional group processes plus software to support them".

Collaborative software is a broad concept that overlaps considerably with computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). According to Carstensen and Schmidt (1999) groupware is part of CSCW. The authors claim that CSCW, and thereby groupware, addresses "how collaborative activities and their coordination can be supported by means of computer systems." Software products such as email, calendaring, text chat, , and bookmarking belong to this category whenever used for group work, whereas the more general term social software applies to systems used outside the workplace, for example, online dating services and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

The use of collaborative software in the work space creates a collaborative working environment (CWE).

Finally, collaborative software relates to the notion of collaborative work systems, which are conceived as any form of human organization that emerges any time that collaboration takes place, whether it is formal or informal, intentional or unintentional. Whereas the groupware or collaborative software pertains to the technological elements of computer-supported cooperative work, collaborative work systems become a useful analytical tool to understand the behavioral and organizational variables that are associated to the broader concept of CSCW.

Douglas Engelbart first envisioned collaborative computing in 1951 and documented his vision in 1962, with working prototypes in full operational use by his research team by the mid-1960s, and held the first public demonstration of his work in 1968 in what is now referred to as "The Mother of All Demos." The following year, Engelbart's lab was hooked into the ARPANET, the first computer network, enabling them to extend services to a broader userbase. See also Intelligence Amplification Section 4: Douglas Engelbart, ARPANET Section on ARPANET Deployed, and the Doug Engelbart Archive Collection.

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