As I'm writing this sentence, I am uploading almost 30 megabytes of Halloween videos to flickr via a wireless router connected to my cable provider, two floors below. I have my Gmail, Facebook and Twitter accounts open, as well as a banana bread recipe on allrecipes.com.
The Web is a very different place than it was when I first discovered it, and so are we. Even during the past five years, as social media has come into its own, our behaviors and attitudes and ways of communicating have significantly changed. And the Web, in large part, is responsible.
So it's fascinating to me when a new application comes out that changes things once again. For me, right now, Google Wave is that application.
I've only played with it a bit, but already it has me thinking about presence. Google Wave has a feature much like instant messaging. What's different from the IM you are familiar with, is that you can see what someone is writing as they are writing it. Which means that they can write something, delete it, and rewrite it while others in the conversation are watching. In a very strange way it is like being inside of someone's head.
Talking is not like that, I think because talking is so extremely present. Even in following a conversation, we often don't remember the last words someone has said. Most of us are used to editing our thoughts before we say something (or at least we try). But writing for many folks is a way to process thought. It's also more permanent than talking, which means that we put a bit more thought into the words we choose.
So what happens when people can see what we are writing when we are writing it? Does it make IM conversations more like talking? Does it take away the intimacy of writing, exposing us in a new way?
I'm not sure, but I am intrigued, and I have to admit a bit uncomfortable with this feature of Google Wave. That's not to say I won't keep using it. I will because I am interested to see where it goes, how people will react and how it will affect the way we communicate.
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