This wave could raise a ripple
The first wave
There’s already been plenty of press about Google Wave, so I’ll just zoom in on the philosophical premise that appeals to me as a fluffy non-developer.
The most spectacular successes in digital communication, email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the ’60s to imitate analog formats — email mimicked snail mail, and IM mimicked phone calls. Since then, so many different forms of communication had been invented — blogs, wikis, collaborative documents, etc. — and computers and networks had dramatically improved. So [we] proposed a new communications model that presumed all these advances as a starting point.
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Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
The details, quite frankly, slid off my think-like-a-sociologist back. People switch/adopt communication platforms largely because they have a critical mass of friends and associates on the new one. Not because of newfangled features. The keywords really are social and simple.
(Naturally, there will be those who argue that the early adopters hanker after features, but historically, innovators and early adopters are a minority whereas everyone else down to rear-propping laggards makes up the bulk.)
Still, watch the developer video and sign up to be notified if you will – there’s no denying that Google Wave is ripe with possibilities.
On a side note, Google has clearly mastered the art of the exclusive trial, but that’s a separate muse altogether.
I call it creative thinking, most people call it out of the box. Could explain why I was the FIRST Marketing Sociologist, first to announce Miley Cyrus 2009 fall tour, first to announce Ashley Tisdale appearing in the U.S. at the Grove in L.A. on the 27th, on and on for firsts.
I disagree with the analogy that today’s email and instant messaging spawned from traditional mail. It is what people accept. I was recently featured in the N.Y. Times on answering machines. I was in corporate marketing getting an AT&T paycheck when answering machines were finally available for general use – one of the benefits of divesting the company (which needs to be done again). Even today people won’t leave a voice mail, but they’ll Twitter all day.
Most U.S. computers have Web cam capabilities, but probably less than 10 percent of those with the capability are utilizing it. People just don’t like it. Guess it’s, Does my hair look okay?” For some reason, there is a barrier against certain forms of communications. Twitter is conceptualized as fantastic because it’s a way around expensive text messaging. Majority of cell phones don’t have the function to do Web casting, though they have the technological capability.
My big questions are why we don’t have Bluetooth capable TV sets to go with our future home computer, the now Bluetooth enabled iPhone? Why our society isn’t ready for the biggest baby boom in history, today’s toddlers that I’ve labeled SECOND DECADE?
For more innovative thinking, visit MarketingSociologist.blogspot.com. Contact me via MediaRelationsExpert.com