Skip to content
Deepak Gupta markTechnology Rewired
Draft. This page is in editorial review and is not indexed yet.

Build cluster · Everyone

Technology Rewired: Collaboration and Productivity

Collaboration software moved from on-prem email servers and file shares to cloud suites, team chat, and project management tools. AI added meeting transcripts and writing help. Agents now take notes, draft follow-ups, update project status, and schedule meetings, which removes much of the status work that filled knowledge workers' weeks.

The shift: Meetings, notes, and follow-ups run themselves; status work disappears.

Verified
2.1

Copilot today
3.0 in five years

How has the collaboration and productivity team changed across five eras?

  1. Era 1 · On-prem

    Before 2005

    0.1

    Work ran on on-prem email, shared drives, desk phones, and meetings in rooms. Assistants managed calendars for executives, and project status lived in someone's spreadsheet.

  2. Era 2 · SaaS and cloud

    2005 to 2020

    0.8

    Cloud office suites, team chat, video meetings, and project management tools made work real-time and remote. They also multiplied channels, notifications, and meetings, and a lot of time went to reporting status.

  3. Era 3 · AI-assisted

    2020 to 2024

    1.8

    Transcription, meeting summaries, and writing assistants arrived in every suite. People still turned notes into tasks and chased follow-ups themselves.

  4. Era 4 · Agentic

    2024 onward

    2.1

    Agents now attend meetings, write notes and action items, update tickets, draft replies, and find time across calendars. The risk is that these agents read everything, so permissions and data exposure matter, as the Chrome extension backdoor showed for productivity add-ons.

  5. Era 5 · Next 5 years

    2026 to 2031

    3.0

    My bet: status meetings and manual updates mostly disappear, and each person works with an agent that keeps their commitments, docs, and calendar in order. Collaboration tools compete on how well their agents act across apps, not on features.

Which collaboration and productivity software is being rewired?

No deep dives yet. The first ones are in the queue below.

Coming next

  • Email clients
  • Calendars and scheduling
  • Meeting notes
  • Project management
  • Docs and wikis
  • Team chat
  • Whiteboards
  • Enterprise search

Also wired into this category: Email Security.

Keep reading

Essays and analysis

What died (Tech Graveyard)

What comes next (Future Tech)

Comparisons