Involvement includes the hard sciences such as physics, biology, and chemistry, and the soft sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, education, and psychology.
Collaboration is promoted by futurists as the way to work in the new millennium.
Collaboratories are virtual or tech-enabled environments that facilitate that way of working. Collaboratories overcome the constraints of space and time, facilitate the economical and ecological use and diffusion of rare and expensive equipment and expertise, and provide for the diffusion and preservation of knowledge created as a result of their exercise. However, much needs to be learned about both the act and the environment. Despite its memic appeal, collaboration is not cooperation, and it is not coordination. Since 1988, when the National Science Foundation first announced its program-wide initiative to support development of collaboratories, or laboratories without walls, the federal government has invested billions of dollars in direct and indirect support of the collaboratory platform, and in interface design, and implementation.