Social communication in a virtual office

We have efficient systems for transmitting 3-kHz audio signals from point to point, but the actual motives for communication-e.g. the desire to make new friends-are not particularly facilitated by the phone system. The same can be said for fax and e-mail. While invaluable as tools, they must often be coerced into serving an intended purpose, such as telling a joke. From this basis, and without any assumptions of technological solutions, we set about designing a system dedicated to facilitating and promoting social communication, with a particular emphasis on flexible and mobile collaboration. In some sense, our goal was to create a kind of electronic analog to the physical office that might supply some of the same encapsulation and facilitation of social interaction