Internet2 as Metaphor for Collaboration

Laurie Faith Cranor offers a somewhat scathing estimate of the value of Internet Collaboration in which the apparent goal of the Internet collaboration is to produce some kind of "product" similar to that of face-to-face collaborations.

The Internet is often hyped as an excellent tool for facilitating collaboration between geographically distant people. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including scientific research, software development, conference planning, political activism, and creative writing. Examples of projects made possible through Internet communication abound. Indeed it is unlikely that students from around the world would have gotten together to produce this magazine had it not been for the Internet. But lost in all the excitement are the stories of the trials and tribulations of Internet collaboration. (Internet Collaboration: Good, Bad, and Downright Ugly)

Missing from Cranor's list are the performances and productions that have been an important part of I2 Collaborations since 2000: simultaneous, multimedia, multidisciplined live performances of creative artists and performers. The experience of these collaborators seldom, if ever, would be described as "bad and downright ugly." Each performance has been for simultaneous live and distant audiences and those audiences have been very enthusiastic about the gestalt of the experience, the blurring of borders, the exploration of Space, Time, and time delays, and the ideas created through the interaction. Artists remark about experiencing Internet2 as a new medium, and explore the implications of this awareness.

To be sure, as with any new technology, there are many difficulties, but overcoming these establishes new terrain. One such production faced enormous impediments, including requiring such bandwidth that Internet2 engineers discovered a traffic jam in the pipeline (at Abilene) that they hadn't known existed. The artists requirements for bandwidth and immediacy brought the problem to light. Although this created considerable difficulty, performers and artists continued to use asynchronous features of the Internet to share their ideas. A number of new works emerged for the production, including one entitled "Lost in Abilene."

Internet2 is currently going through a transformative stage in which there is less need for high tech support from ITS units of institutions. These interactive productions are much easier to mount and the new laptops make it possible to create new possibilities anywhere the Internet can be accessed. For those in the arts, Internet2 is less and less a technology, and more a metaphor for creative collaboration.