Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2008
In recent years, evolving communication technologies have produced dramatic changes in how scholars communicate. Through mechanisms such as e-mail, wireless networks, and mobile communication networks, the volume of information that scholars can send—and the range of people to whom information can be sent—are radically different today than they were for previous generations. These changes in communicative capacity raise expectations of what scholars can accomplish. One source of raised expectations is the possibility for dynamic, large-scale, geographically dispersed collaboratories that evolving communication technologies allow. The promise is that large groups of researchers, working together, can generate insights more effectively and efficiently than they would if they worked alone or only with people in their own geographic proximity.