A Wave of Change

First of all, if you haven’t seen it already, go to wave.google.com and view the 80 minute demonstration video. Go ahead, I’ll wait. I’ll even let you go sign up for the service, because I know you want to!

Or, if you’re impatient and don’t feel like siting through 1.3 hours of cool demonstrations, at least check out from about minute 19 to 22, which is what I’m going to be talking about.

So you can see how Google Wave is going to completely change communication, right? Not just the tools that we use to communicate, or subtle changes such as character-by-character transfer of information…but how those subtle changes will very likely modify our fundamental perception of communication. At least, I think so.

My first thought was about publication. Publishing has already changed dramatically within the past decade…we are in the middle of a revolution in which the public is now the publisher. We are moving away from trained professionals, censors, and media giants controlling the content – whether that content be news, opinion, fiction, or what-have-you – to the individual as the creator, editor, and publisher. And finally, we are getting used to that idea (or at least some of us are). Then along comes Google Wave to once again turn publishing on its head.

Let’s look at the current state of a typical blog; the user can be anyone from a trained professional to a budding amateur. They write posts as drafts; edit, modify, find and link to resources, delete and add content, etc. Then when the post looks pristine (or pristine enough to them), and they are sure it’s ready to post (I tend to double, triple, and even quadruple check mine), they hit the notorious “publish” button. Once that’s done, it’s out there in the public eye – and while the user can always go back and edit a post (hopefully before anyone has a chance to read it!) there’s no guarantee that a reader hasn’t already seen that first post, or that it hasn’t been archived by a search engine or saved for posterity on Archive.org. This means that what we publish once, we can’t unpublish. Hence why we’re so careful that a post is “ready” before it is put out into the world.

Then along comes Google Wave, with its ability to show a post being edited as it happens right within the browser. This means that if a reader across the world happens to be on your site at the right time while you’re creating a post, they can watch live as you create and edit, just as if they were looking over your shoulder while you write. This is what I’m talking about when I imply that Google is introducing a revolution in communication.

A friend asked me a few weeks ago (he has a teenage son) why it is that young people seem so much more willing to share information, info that in my friend’s day would have never been discussed with acquaintances, let alone the public. He wondered how the shift happened from not talking about our most private matters to posting them publicly on LiveJournal, Facebook, or Twitter. It was a question I had to think about, and one that I have a theory for, but I’ll save that for a future post.

The point is that there has been a shift from privatized information to public information…from assuming that sharing will always produce negative results to believing in the transparency and openness of information and people alike.

Considering this, we’re already skirting the edge of comfort with anyone and everyone being able to create, edit, polish, and publish their own thoughts. Now, we’ve removed the “edit and polish” part of that equation. Anyone who comes across a blog that has embedded Google Wave will now be able to read along as the blogger writes. This removes an important aspect of publishing that has been inherent in every form of the written language from the invention of print to the modern web: the ability to keep what you write to yourself until it’s “ready” to be seen by the public. It is a truly live form of performance, a form which to my knowledge has never been achievable by writers.

How do you think that written content, or the process of writing, will change when writers no longer choose to check and recheck and then check their post again before publishing it? How will it change when all of the mistakes – spelling errors, content errors, continuity errors, incorrect facts, etc. – are visible to anyone who cares to tune in? I think many writers will assume that their integrity as content creators will go down – that their readers will lose respect for them and their craft. I assume this because of how trained journalists have reacted to the transition from news being reported by newspapers to being reported by individuals. It makes sense in a bizarre, if antique, way – how can your news have integrity if the reporter has no institutional integrity?

However, I don’t think this will be the case. I think that fans will have a growing respect for the writers they follow…I think that being able to view the drafts as they are being built will not only entice readers to check the site often in order to catch the writer in the act, but I think it will make them feel much closer to the writer in the way that Twitter has made us feel much closer to the celebrities we love. It will help to narrow the gap between celebrity and fan, without forcing the two into mutual territory.

I can already imagine what I’d like to do with Google Wave when it’s released. I would like to integrate it with my Wordpress blog, so that I can see what this effect might have on anyone who cares to read my work. I would also like to try writing a work of fiction publicly, perhaps a short story or novella, and encourage people to log in and view as I work (talk about public accountability! If you’re not in the act of writing, your fans will be able to see right away and call you on it). If this is possible before November, I think it’d even be great to attempt this during NaNoWriMo…what a great union the two could be!

And completely out of left field, even though the extension doesn’t yet exist (to my knowledge), what if you could create an application that uses Google Wave’s ability to collaborate and update live for visual art? To draw live online or in your friends’ waves…or to even publish webcomics live – no, to draw them live as your audience watches – that could be the next evolution of streaming live!

But I’m getting way ahead of myself, I think. First thing’s first: it has to be released!