Distance, technology and stuff. Somewhere over Paris.
I’m writing this on an aeroplane between Geneva and London. This is my weekly commute since becoming a convener of the ATLAS Standard Model physics group. We use teleconferencing and our world wide web, but chats over coffees are still essential for proper coordination of what is now a huge production machine for scientific papers.
At the Guardian. See also Chapter 4.2 of Smashing Physics.