Google Wave: Are We Surfing or Drowning?

In September, having an invite to Wave, Google’s latest milestone product, made you the coolest kid in school (at least among the nerds hanging in the dining hall). Now seemingly everyone’s got one, and interaction with the Wave is exponentially increasing as we start to see more of the uses it can be put to. In essence, it’s a sophisticated blend of instant messaging and online fora, where discussions can be played out on an epic canvas (a “wave”) with multiple participants, in real time. 

When you open Wave for the first time, even the most hardened don’t-read-the-instructions tech head will be running for the safety of the introduction video; this is a complex interface that requires the same amount of neural dot-joining that the iPhone’s touchscreen does when you use it for the first time. And Google doesn’t make it easy on you – while their low key video tutors organise decidedly un-rock’n'roll barbecues and chuck U-rated Sudoku banter around, they still expect you to know what a UI is. The message from Wave is clear – this is for the big boys of 21st-century online interaction, and if you don’t like it, you can go play on Twitter with the other babies.                                

As most of your pals are likely not on Wave yet, or have been scared away by its learning curve, the simple things – interacting on a private wave with a handful of acquaintances – aren’t being done on a broad scale. Instead, for most people it’s straight into the deep end, interacting with anyone who happens to be knocking around on a “public wave” (one that anyone can contribute to). The charming tone you get when you enter a public wave is of excited, chattering children, rather than wary and polite adults.

So what are they talking about? As noted by Bad Idea contributor Chris Baraniuk on his Stuff Happening Now blog, text-based role-playing games are an inevitable early presence when you consider the average profile of those desperate for a Google Wave invite; but there’s everything here, from dubstep mixtapes to cigar appreciation to “beautiful men” (read: disturbing pics of Arnie with his shirt off).

Despite – or perhaps because of – the sophisticated and intricate interface, people are coming up with decidedly primitive games that involve simple clickers and counters; meanwhile my favourite wave is ‘CRAZY PARTY WAVE Y’ALL’, which is a giant gangshow of nonsense performed by people becoming aware of the awesome (but as yet only somewhat fathomable) power of Wave. It’s a joyful, timesucking mess of rainbow fonts, Daft Punk videos and stoned slang that gives a glimpse of what Wave will probably descend into on a massive scale.

You can bet that Google has many serious developers beavering away at expanding the functionality of Wave, which is currently only in ‘preview’. But for the moment, basement-bound nerds are filling the gaps, making ‘bots’ that do certain things as you work within a wave. These range from the useful to the purely LOL-worthy – a Swedish Chef that writes ‘bork’ everywhere, or the Kanye West bot that interrupts each new post with an “Imma let you finish”, or a reminder of how George Bush doesn’t like black people. Again: where Google imagined barbecue organisation, the world responded with an endlessly self-publishing Rick Astley video.

But while the amateurs are honing the details, there are wider functionalities that one would hope are going to crop up in the final version, but which haven’t been announced yet. URLs for public waves to help the sharing of discussions? One-click tweeting? Plus or minus recommendations on individual posts?

And yet: isn’t there enough to take in already? Twitter’s beauty lies in its brevity feeding back into its search function, providing brief results; search the Wave for a single term and it’s lost in the haystack of everyone’s untethered ranting.

Indeed, on first glance Wave is the sort of technological tipping point that could feasibly send a whole generation into asceticism or monastic purity – a nightmare of cacophonous, meaningless chatter, rendered with Byzantine intricacy, and topped off with a nauseating Silicon Valley cuteness. If Twitter turned the dial of informational white noise up a notch, Wave whacks it to 11; similarly, if any technology was guaranteed to shock the elderly with their apparent redundancy, this is it.

Wave may yet change the way we interact, and seems especially ready for the next generation of touchscreens, but Google clearly has an optimistic view of people’s ability to adapt to new technology. It took a lot people years to get their heads round email; expect many, many more for Wave to truly make a difference to our daily lives.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Sci-tech | December 4, 2009 1:28PM |