Changes in information technology, changes in work

Abstract This paper investigates the social issues that arise when new information technologies are adopted into work cultures. It reviews the author's personal observations of two generations of networking technologies (email and media space) developed to support communication and collaboration at Xerox PARC. It then shows the way experience from those earlier efforts influenced a third project where non-researchers used video links to collaborate among several parts of the company separated by multiple time zones. Some themes explored in this paper include the significance of being part of a “technologically enabled milieu” (a phrase coined by Adler and Cook), and the ability of video technology to support both “awareness” and a sense of presence between long-distance collaborators. The paper also stresses the importance of understanding work as a social process and of taking account of the subtleties of work practice when incorporating new information technologies into an existing work culture.