Missing the Wave : D'Arcy Norman dot net
Sure, Wave is big. It’s probably going to be useful. But for now, it’s really just a glorified, collaborative, polysynchronous “Hello World!” generator. Yes, you can embed Gadgets/Doodads/Whatnots. Yes, you can make it convert your text into Pirate Speak. Very cool. Awesome. I can feel the future changing.
So far, from my limited experimentation with it, it is too confusing to use as a conversation space. It’s too disconnected to use as a publishing medium. So, its real functions have yet to be discovered. It’s not email. It’s not the web as we know it. It’s something different. But that doesn’t mean there is anything necessarily wrong or broken about what we have now.
If I want to communicate, I’ll talk to people. Or IM. Or email. Or write a blog post. Or post a tweet. Or any of an uncountable list of other activities, none of which are replaced by Wave. And that’s OK. It’s not going to absorb and consume all online interaction. It’s not going to change the world. It doesn’t have to.
