Liveware: a personal, distributed CSCW

Liveware supports CSCW in socially-organised systems involving personal rather than institutional computers. One of the ironies of modern computing technology is that while many individuals now operate personal computers whose power rivals that of large installations, they are without the infrastructure of support that traditionally accompanies such systems. The benefits of CSCW, based on distributed systems technology, are inaccessible to the personal user. It is clear that CSCW has many potential applications for personal users, yet CSCW so far relies on high bandwidth communications, despite the obvious limitations of humans to generate and use information at such rates. The paper discusses the assumptions underlying an essentially zero-cost scheme, called liveware, that realises many asynchronous CSCW advantages