Convergence In Coordination: Everything Socialized

"In short order, we may witness a wholesale shift in many of the givens that represent the conventional notion of how we coordinate through software. Consider these examples: a) The current approach to coordinating meetings -- generally involving individuals looking at personal calendars and cycling through several rounds of e-mail -- is just unworkable. Imagine a solution based on subscribing to others' published schedules, and each person deciding how much information to provide about their schedule based on degree, closeness or kind of relationship with others. b) One of the clear outcomes of the flurry of activity thus far in social networking is the emergence of the multi-layered personal profile, where who you are varies based on who is interested. This is not just a conceit that grows from the interests of dating, but a fundamental reality of social interaction that Outlook's notion of contact information simply does not come close to. c) The use of project-oriented coordination tools (like Kubi and Groove) are an attempt to impose a social scope on the myriad to-do's that animate our worlds. However, these offer too coarse-grained a model. Just providing information about a collection of projects from which we can identify activities to perform is insufficient. It's not enough to act as if everything can simply be fanned out, and where all the atomic tasks are performed in Taylorist isolation." Stowe Boyd could not have summarized it better, confirming many of the points that I have been raising with some of the major players in this industry. I am glad to see I am not alone in seeing such convergence. To me this is recommended reading.