As the engineers discovered when they tried to coax their networked computers into reaching a consensus, asynchrony is not just synchrony spread out; it instead introduces its own difficulties. A problem that might have been solvable in a few minutes of real-time interaction in a meeting room or on the phone might now generate dozens of messages, and even then might still fail to converge on a satisfactory conclusion. It’s possible, in other words, that once you move your workplace toward this style of communication, the hyperactive property of the hyperactive hive mind workflow becomes
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