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I've seen Google Wave in action at a BarCamp here in Sydney, and while it seems ripe with technical possibilities, I think the bigger challenges by far with its

I've seen Google Wave in action at a BarCamp here in Sydney, and while it seems ripe with technical possibilities, I think the bigger challenges by far with its adoption will be social and cultural. With email, there already existed norms which could be taken from real life and applied to the new electronic analogue. So the new technology dropped pretty neatly into an existing cultural structure - which then evolved. But Google Wave knows no such existing cultural structure I can think of - perhaps there are certain etiquette rules that apply to multiple people talking in a group at a party while simultaneously writing on a single piece of paper. But if there are, I don't know them. So adopters of Google Wave will face social challenges as well as technological ones, and I don't think Google has really thought this through as well as they've structured the protocols and technical infrastructure. Start to consider Google Wave being used in a corporate environment, and you've got legal and commercial challenges on top of that - I shudder to think how a contractual discussion could be conducted over Google Wave. You might answer that it won't be, we'll still rely on email, but if we do, then why add another communication channel? We shall see - though it speaks of how deeply Wave challenges current paradigms of online communication that no-one - least of all me - is prepared to offer concrete predictions regarding how it will be used.

dabeeeenster 17y ago
>> perhaps there are certain etiquette rules that apply to multiple people talking in a group at a party while simultaneously writing on a single piece of paper. But if there are, I don't know them. That's it! Google Wave is Pictionary!
pegobry 17y ago
I agree with you that it's a problem -- as the name indicates, there's a strong offline metaphor for e-mail. But I think the way Wave will get around this is by being used first primarily not as a communications tool, but as a collaboration tool. When you're a business or other team trying to get a project done, you use the tool that lets you work together most efficiently, and you don't care if it feels more like IM or email or a wiki (wikis, here's something with no offline equivalent and whose mainstream usage took off like a rocketship), and so that's how I think it will get traction. From that point forward, as people use it as a collaboration tool, they'll seamlessly come to use it as a communication tool, and it might progressively replace email and IM (and social networking?), as I believe it can if it's indeed as good as it sounds.
tc 17y ago
Wave isn't about replacing email per-se. It's about a paradigm shift that obsoletes Exchange and perhaps threatens Facebook's position. As for contracts, Wave retains a versioned change history that can be replayed, and certainly has a better guarantee of authenticity than unsigned email.

dabeeeenster 17y ago

>> perhaps there are certain etiquette rules that apply to multiple people talking in a group at a party while simultaneously writing on a single piece of paper. But if there are, I don't know them. That's it! Google Wave is Pictionary!

pegobry 17y ago

I agree with you that it's a problem -- as the name indicates, there's a strong offline metaphor for e-mail. But I think the way Wave will get around this is by being used first primarily not as a communications tool, but as a collaboration tool. When you're a business or other team trying to get a project done, you use the tool that lets you work together most efficiently, and you don't care if it feels more like IM or email or a wiki (wikis, here's something with no offline equivalent and whose mainstream usage took off like a rocketship), and so that's how I think it will get traction. From that point forward, as people use it as a collaboration tool, they'll seamlessly come to use it as a communication tool, and it might progressively replace email and IM (and social networking?), as I believe it can if it's indeed as good as it sounds.

tc 17y ago

Wave isn't about replacing email per-se. It's about a paradigm shift that obsoletes Exchange and perhaps threatens Facebook's position. As for contracts, Wave retains a versioned change history that can be replayed, and certainly has a better guarantee of authenticity than unsigned email.