about google wave

on first look, google wave seems to just make things more salient and organic, with its flashy formatting options and integral embedding functions.

however, there is one thing you can do on gwave that you can't do on gchat/gmail. (although i think skype pioneered it). that is you can go back and edit your or others' thread. this came up in a gwave conversation i had with G. H.. we found that we can easily make reference to something that has been discussed in the past (in time) in the conversation, by typing comments next to it, with arrows and different formatting to indicate new lines. this has philosophical impact! :) it technically makes all parts of the conversations (in time) accessible (in space), and hence expands the linear irreversible style of conversation into a more network like structure. effectively this also expands our working memory, and captures the structure of information transfer that is more natural (and indeed needed, especially by the ADD generation of ours). this, not only gmail and gchat can't do, but normal person to person talking conversation can't do either. the only thing resembling it is a white board discussion.