A system and method for communication and collaboration are disclosed. A generalized annotation based mechanism using an emergent self organization characteristic of the natural language of the annotations allows users to search for relevant items, users to search for relevant users, and items to search for relevant users based on aggregation of stored annotations having associations between keywords, items and users in a context space. Aggregations based on correlations between users, items and keywords, are used to form a collaborative content relevance that allows users to be directed to items or other users, and items to be directed to users.