Collaboration and communication – is more better?
Taking things one better, we then had the arrival of the telephone and then the fax. Then the computer came along, and we got email, then instant messaging, then web conferencing. Oh – and just in case we were not quite connected enough, along comes RIM with the BlackBerry – the relatively new drug for the affluent young executive (or older one trying to look younger). Now, we have hybrid systems giving us easy voice conferencing from our mobile phones, our PDAs, our laptops when we are sitting in the airport lounge – the list is endless. And all of this was meant to make our lives easier. As with a lot of technology, the next “best thing” rarely gets rid of the last “best thing”. In 1981, the IBM PC was going to get rid of the mainframe – IBM sold more mainframe processing power in 2005 than it had sold all together previously. Email was going to rid the office of paper (remember the paperless office?). HP’s profits are dominated by sales of toner and inks for its printer range. The i
