In recent years, evolving communication technologies have produced dramatic changes in how
scholars communicate. Through mechanisms such as e-mail, wireless networks, and mobile
communication networks, the volume of information that scholars can send—and the range of
people to whom information can be sent—are radically different today than they were for
previous generations. These changes in communicative capacity raise expectations of what
scholars can accomplish. One source of raised expectations is the possibility for dynamic,
large-scale, geographically dispersed collaboratories that evolving communication
technologies allow. The promise is that large groups of researchers, working together, can
generate insights more effectively and efficiently than they would if they worked alone or
only with people in their own geographic proximity.