The Unfulfilled Promise of Digital Technologies for Collaborative Writing

Beyond the uncertainty of reception that accompanies all writing other than the strictly personal, an added uncertainty attends working with others to produce writing in collaboration. The digital age appears to be a boon to collaborative writers, with its myriad tools for overcoming geographic distance. It seems clear to me, however, that these tools cannot replace the primacy of physical presence, only supplement it. The connection fostered by a physical meeting of bodies is a necessary precursor, if not an ongoing requirement, of a successful collaboration. It is easy to take this for granted in the era of on-line collaborative writing projects and the increasing use of wiki tools in education. More complex technologies move towards increasingly clever ways to mimic physical presence, tacitly acknowledging the value of the real thing, and yet, as digital technologies saturate our lives with our increasing complicity, there seems insufficient value placed on the real thing