Groupware and social networks: will life ever be the same again?

Over the past twenty years industry and academia have been working to devel op computer systems to increase work group's productivity, commonly referre d to as groupware. Groupware encompasses a broad spectrum of research and d evelopment including group support systems, computer-supported collaborativ e work, group decision support systems, and computer mediated collaboration . Applications arising out of these efforts included concurrent multi-user authoring systems, computer conferencing, integrated computer/video meeting systems, electronic voting, brainstorming, and workflow systems. The paper s in this special issue are some of the best from over 100 papers submitted to the GROUP'97 conference sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Supporting Group Work. They represent work conducted by researchers on four continents from both industry and academia. As a group the authors present a blend of theory, practice, and technological innovation from the groupwa re research arena. This paper is intended to serve as an introduction to th e area of groupware research and development. In it we explore the evolutio n of groupware and expose some of its effects on organizations and society. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.