Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web.
This is silly, it doesn't account for the many, many axes of communication.<p>* Push vs. Pull.  Does the recipient have to ask to get incoming messages.<p>* Off the cuff vs. Official. How quickly is the communication written, how much thought goes into formal language & proofreading.<p>* Personal vs. Notification (this is a big problem for communication). Regular mail has fallen to this, 99% of mail is automated messages, both wanted and unwanted.  Email is going the same direction.  Phone never has moved very far that direction.<p>* Filtered vs. Raw.  Computer filtered, or human filtered. Spam, autocategorization, etc.<p>And then it adds document problems to it:<p>* Collaborative vs. Sign off.  Am I co-writing the document with somebody or is it a write-revise-signoff cycle?<p>* Controlled vs. AdHoc.  How formal does the collaboration need to be. Does it make sense for us to both be editing things, or is internal consistency too important to allow concurrent edits?<p>Basically, just saying "screw email, it's a chat! With Widgets!" totally ignores what people use communication services for, and the varying levels of formality, proofreading, speed, style, and automation.<p>A quick rundown of communication protocols that exist:<p>Email: Delayed, Push for the most part, Filtered, lots of notifications<p>IM: Instant, Push, Raw, few notifications<p>Blog: Delayed, Pull, Filtered (RSS reader, you decide what to read), few notifications.<p>Waves: Instant, Push (?), Raw, notifications... maybe?<p>Basically, it fits in the IM category for the most part.  Why would this replace my email to the boss containing a page of pros vs. cons on a new technology that we were going to adopt?  Would this replace the automated quarterly emails from HR showing me my 401k balance (and does it do the job any better?).<p>Summary:<p>Very technologically cool, but I have no idea how it fits well into the framework of communication types, and adds anything that's not covered adequately with current communication methods.<p>A thought I have had was that twitter flourished because it was a different set of attributes from anything else that existed (along with other things of course).