Global collaboratory?

There are different definitions but collaboratory could simply be described as a (virtual) environment where participants make use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to access shared instruments and data. In the article From Shared Databases to Communities of Practice: A Taxonomy of Collaboratories Bos, Zimmermann, Olson et al. propose a typology of collaboratories, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses and the purpose of collaboration - is it established just for aggregation (enabling accessibility, but at the expense of synchronous communication) or is it intended to facilitate co-creating (communication among participants is tighter). Of course, any kind of collaboration is dependent on the participants and on-line communication is no exception. An extensive research regarding what motivates and sustains adoption, what prevents individual scholars or groups of scholars to adopt e-Research tools is provided by Ralph Schroeder and Dimitrina Spencer (2009).

Prima facie collaboratories are used as a means of collaborations inside the academic field. Scholars engage in such collaborations in order to facilitate working on a common project. But accessibility of new technologies (to those on the right side of the “digital divide”) enables also less formal, and more provisional collaboratories outside the academic filed.

I saw a video the other day about the impact of the Internet age on dance evolution and it occurred to me, that what Jon Chus, the LXD representative is talking about is actually an informal global collaboratory.

In his short introductory speech, Jon Chus states:

"Dancers never had a better friend than technology. [Using] on-line videos and social networking [sites] dancers have created a whole global laboratory on-line for dance work. Kids in Japan are taking moves from YouTube videos created in Detroit, building on it within days and releasing a new video, while teenagers in California are taking the Japanese video and remixing it to create a whole new dance style in itself."

Of course this form of collaboratory lacks organization and using Schroeder's and Spencer's term “politics”. It is hard to categorize it, since there is no definite goal they are trying to achieve. It could be categorized as co-creating collaboratory but in my opinion, it is more of an aggregation type: "participants" are scattered all over the globe, their coupling is loose and the nature of communication is asynchronous. Nevertheless they are effective, because all “participans” are (more or less voluntarily) working toward a common goal (in this case getting new ideas for choreographies) using accessible ICT's. It would be interesting to analyze such informal collaborations and mutatis mutandis compare the resaults with existing research in academic collaboratories. I would expect atleast inertia and recalcitrance to turn out as less significant factors than in the Schroeder and Spencer (2009) case.