Yesterday I posted on The Smarter Office about coworking spaces:

“The tools we have available for connecting, communicating, and collaborating with coworkers, colleagues, and far-flung team members means that it’s entirely possible to live and work in a remote location — hidden in the forests of France, the near the cliffs of Dover, or near the bottom of the world in New Zealand. A recent-model laptop, a phone, a broadband connection (wired or wireless), and a suite of collaboration software tools gives people pretty much everything they need for sharing documents, holding meetings, and getting a lot of work done. It can be a very productive way to live and work.

But there’s a problem with this picture. Humans were designed to be social – to work and live in family and community settings – and while working in such isolated settings is technologically-possible, it’s not always humanly-optimal. A traditional answer has been to join an organization and “go to the office” during the work day, but with work becoming more virtual, more global, and the rise of independent contractors (or the “creative class”), the need to find a new way of working together in loose federations of like-minded people has arisen. Many people turn to the local coffee shop as a way of getting much needed human contact, but there’s an unspoken assumption that you are paying for your working space in the coffee shop by drinking lots of coffee. Something different is needed, and into this void has stepped the coworking movement.“

Read more: Coworking Spaces for Collaborative Working, Serendipity, and Building Community