People are different from computers, but many of the forces that complicate the design of asynchronous distributed systems loosely apply to humans attempting to collaborate in the office. Synchrony might be expensive to arrange—both in the office setting and in computer systems—but trying to coordinate in its absence is also expensive. This reality summarizes well what many experienced as office communication shifted to email: they traded the pain of phone tag, scribbled notes, and endless meetings for the pain of a surprisingly large volume of ambiguous electronic messages passed back and
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