As it is the last reading assignments we have on CSCW AND the topic is on CSCW, I just thought that it’s appropriate to do a reflection on CSCW itself based on the paper we read. We are finally at the end of the course after all!
The paper is basically “CSCW and the Internet of Things” presented by Toni Robertson and Ina Wagner is a pretty interesting take on Internet of Things or in short IoTs. In this paper, they look at the IoTs as humans cooperating with each other, and use the concepts we have learned in CSCW and apply them on smart objects.
CSCW focuses on the technological aspect of human communication in the society. In the paper, we have analyzed the IoTs based on the the concepts of CSCW such as:
- The Cooperative work of interconnected objects and spaces
- Coordination mechanism
- Local contexts and common information spaces
- Awareness
Using these concepts, we CAN see the similarities that are there between humans and IoTs when it comes to CSCW. If we think about an application in CSCW that deals with humans, such as groupware, we see that, they are cooperating with each other on a common goal (e.g. In Github, contributing in codes or in Google drive, contributing to a specific document). We also see the coordination mechanism such as, whenever someone is using some sort of Chat service, when the other party is writing, we are waiting for them to finish so that we can continue the conversation. For local contexts and common info space what artifact we can work on. And of course awareness, which lets us know who’s online and who’s collaborating with us etc. In the paper, we saw the same concepts being used on IoTs, such as keeping track of status of the perishable items that are being carried on trucks, coordinating the route of trucks based on the traffic information, Keeping check on the status of dangerous chemical drums etc.
I feel like the main target of the paper was to convince us that how CSCW can be used for the development and improvement of IoTs and I’m pretty convinced about it. I can clearly see the connections that are made between them and it does seem like a nice approach to deal with the concepts.
