Formalization of computer supported cooperative work applications

From its first appearance in 1984, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) has attracted a lot of research attention in distributed systems. Over the past decade, the CSCW community has developed a number of experimental systems and commercial products to support collaboration. However, much of the reported work is highly application-specific. There generally lacks a sound infrastructure to support the development of a wide variety of CSCW applications. It is essential to formalize the collaboration concepts, model the cooperative and communicative activities, erect CSCW-oriented architectures, and construct a flexible and extendable development environment for building CSCW applications.