A Vision of Distributed, Collaborative Enterprises

Workshop on Wide-Area Collaboration and Cooperative Computing
Second International WWW Conference: Mosaic and the Web


After briefly describing trends in management of Federal funding for information infrastructure technology and applications, I will turn to describing ARPA's growing interest in collaboration support technologies. Successful execution of rapid-response collaborations -- from crisis action to industrial alliances -- is crucial in areas ranging from health care to manufacturing to military task forces. This requires the means to reach out over the information superhighway to rapidly form and manage distributed groups: tiger teams, task forces, or industrial consortia. This creates a need for intelligent information services and infrastructure that make it quick and easy to:

This talk will provide an overview of current ARPA-supported work in these three areas and describe new directions now under consideration (with the intent of stimulating discussion and gathering input rather than announcing official positions).