In this New World, I sit to work in front of my PC. My desktop my RSS reader. When an item catches my eye, I single out a friend and flick it over to him. When he gets it, you might think I sent him an e-mail: a message from me pops-up on his screen, and no one can access it but us. Since he's working, his response is immediate. When it pops-up, we chat, while I still read my morning stream. He mentions something similar to this item was posted in a forum he frequents, and sends me the link.
I shove my stream to the side and the forum takes over the screen: messages on top are the trunks of upside-down trees, public responses branch out to all sides. Some of those responses are from people I know, friends of mine, co-workers: their responses are highlighted, and some are only available to me because I'm some limited circle or other.
I read the post he linked to. Clicking below it, I post my public reply; next to it, my picture will appear. People subscribed to me, friends, family, or just people who like my writing, will see this post and my reply in their stream.
I have other thoughts about the item, so I click again - but this time, I limit my reply to a few of my close friends. A conversation branches out from the forum post - some of it regarding the post, some of it more personal in nature. Those who are next to their PCs or on their mobile, will answer in flow, their words cut off and mingle with others.
While the conversation is going on, I do have to work. I'm preparing my class for tomorrow. My supervisor, and a friend who also teaches where I work, can both see the file. Every so often my friend writes notes in the margin. Those I like I incorporate into the file - my supervisor can't see my friend's suggestions, only my own work. Near lunch my supervisor will check the file. She might send it to another teacher, for her opinion. I will now have two streams on the same file, and might even have two versions of it, easily comparable.
I need to concentrate, so I limit my stream. Now only co-workers or my partner can call me. My phone rings, and I answer it. My PC beeps, and I answer that - text, or voice, it's the same conversation, and I could switch between them anytime. If I want, I can record the voice conversation and send it to someone else - they can call back, or they can write notes in reply.
During lunch, I might expend my stream again, see what my friends have been up to since the morning, catch up on my favorite channels and blogs. I might get off the PC, though, and do something else...
In mid-2009 Google wowed everyone with the announcement of Google Wave. "We asked ourselves how e-mail would have looked if it was invented today" - that was the tagline, but Wave did much more than that.
It changed the way we look at data online. All text, be it a document, an e-mail, or a chat conversation, was to be handled by the same free system. But it was also a revolutionary way of looking at digital identity: the same digital ID would "own" all different pieces of data, and your personal, professional and public relationships would serve to guide the data (the different "waves") to the right recipients.
As awesome as it might have been, it never materialized. Few wanted to make the transition from their previous web-mail applications to Wave, and inside the system you could only communicate with other Wave users. Furthermore, Wave didn't work on IE, the most popular browser at the time. It was a "desolate network": a great system that no one was using. So, it was announced that Google Wave would be retired: first they stopped developing it, at the end of January it would be "read-only", and in April 2012, it would go off the air.
We saw the "ripples" of Google Wave in two products that followed: when Google launched Buzz, all Gmail users found they were automatically members of the service. Buzz was meant to track your digital behavior, and to avoid the "desolate network" problem, but instead Google found out people really hated when you decided things for them.
The real heir to Wave was Google+. You can see the idea of an ubiquitous digital identity behind the public posts and +1, and the flexible nature of sharing with Circles. However, Google+ is missing the true revolution of Wave, since it only manages digital behavior. Data is still run on wildly different systems, and we still write e-mails using stupid little plaintext files.
In an accidentally public post that garnered tons of attention, Google Engineer Steve Yegge wrote that Google can create great products, but doesn't know how to create platforms. I think it's failure to turn Wave into an online data management platform is an example of that. Had they done a better job, I think we would have a had a better, albeit less anonymous, web today. Since I'm a great Google fan, I mourn the world I briefly glimpsed through Wave's crisp features, and hope they learn from Wave's mistakes and do a better job in the future.
