In a nutshell, they are giving us (the users) a new communication tool that is somewhat of an hybrid between a simplified Google doc, a chat room and an email. While I see the benefit of using it to collaborate in the most strict sense of the term, I am a bit disappointed. I was hoping for a slightly different approach focused more on the business end. The focus seems to be on social activities and we all know we do not need another social network to worry about.
What I like about it
it is reasonably simple, you start a wave (a context container that can handle multimedia) and start dragging and dropping people in. You can use it to manage the invite to a party as much as a project brainstorming. Not bad, well done.
What I do not like about it
every body can do anything to any content. While that sounds terrific on paper, in reality it poisons the very spirit of collaboration since only two outcomes are possible:
- everybody will edit everybody's else content without a common path (note I did not say without a common goal, this is a tool problem not a vision problem). This is otherwise known as chaos :-)
- nobody touches anything and nothing happens. If people are not engaged in whatever it is that the "wave" represents, they have very little motivation to do anything and a lot of motivation not to. Why? Google Wave *can* easily be mistaken for another social network and people will ask themselves how is this different from Facebook, Evite, MySpace etc.
It is easy to argue that this small *detail* will hinder adoption until the case for it becomes clear to everybody. Right now I expect that non Gmail users will resist signing up thinking, somewhat correctly, that they do not need to deal with yet another account. Sigh.
Okay, now I am disappointed too.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your thoughts here:
“While that sounds terrific on paper, in reality it poisons the very spirit of collaboration…” and the sureness of ensuing chaos.
"…registered users."
Yes, more unneeded top-down behavioral-manipulative control. With privacy restricts and if they gave me back my behavioral data back.. I would not mind so much. (This will add support to the “Take Back Our Data!” idea.)
I did not have a chance to play and I suspect Andrea you know what I would have liked to see.
My problem is that we are making one huge mistake in our assumptions. That is this idea that we actualy know who we are.
I think I am going to start the "70K" club. This reprsent 0.0001% of approx 7.0B human beings on the planets who are truly conscious of their "Self." Another 0.01% are truly trying to become more aware in some way shape or form.
In this vein then... i would like to see a more serious socnet for creative, fun loving and very serious humans which helps them to first find each other more effectively and along gift-driven matrices... and then to go get kewl things done; and to track ah-ha's (units of measure/insight) and Flo (felt-time) to begin with and migrate to discernable cognitive patterns (derived from behavior over time) within each and between all users; and to be able to measure and visualize synergy patterns within each and between all users.
And underneath all this rests an engine and tool chest that creates a space called MySelf or Home or... a space for each user to actually watch their Self evolve and change... a space where-in the innate and naturally gift-driven Human BEing, this I/We, can figure out the more optimal life/work path (decision analysis) and then life-work "friends" (synergy analysis) for we/me.
To know MySelf you will need a more dynamic, semi-real-time evolving Profile - The Evolving PROFILE - that provides life-data back to the user, uses a dynamic visual 4D display with audio... multi-sensory is good, and uses this as a way to pattern-connect with the world of "others"... vs our resume. Our "taken-back" or newly minted and "personally owned" behavior data has been flagged over time of course, with these thousands of ah-ha event moments and flo measures which we input (takes a 1/2 sec) while we are collaborating with others.... or just behaving on our own.
Dynamic 4D visualized and correlate-able User Profiles (traditional tagged txt along your basic temporal line) using new ah-ha and flo data (the resultant patterns over this data over time) on top of our newly acquired personal behavioral data... this I like. This, as you know, I am working on.
Aaahhh, I am so easily disappointed.
That said, had they done all this my disappointment in being beaten to the market would have been, let's say, painful.
If someone at Google, or other, wants to make all this happen then, well, let's dance.
The key is to agree on the basic assumption, that the human user market is yearning to know its "True Self" and that this unstoppable force of human nature will cause the shifts in internet as we know it. Hence, my predictions of The Coming Tsunami I have shared with you before.
"What kind of Asian are you?"
"What kind of drink are you?"
"What kind of ape are you?"
If this is not a stark indication of a "Great Yearning" of our internet using humanity and a symptom of humanity at large... (“The 70K Club” needs to expand)… then I don’t know what is. Andrea, I am just amazed that we are missing this (i.e., I’m not funded to the tune of $25M already). Maybe it is because evolutionary-anthropologists are not writing software. Hell, even then…
Cheers Andrea and thanks for the post.
PS Please don't take offence at my blurting-out here... You have simply given me a cognitive-canvas to have ah-ha's insights (yes, some new ones are in here) and to share them... true collab.
Thank you again.
70K = approx 0.001%...
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