Re: [T-list] Invitation to join the Dundee Google Wave 101 Group
Rick Moynihan
> Just to temper the excitement, as always, even with those who suggest you
> shouldn't be evil, I would have to ask what Google get out of this? It has
> been suggested that they are, once again, trying to effect control. So I'd
> take a careful look at not just how open the APIs are etc, but whether as a
> software project and/or set of standards it operates as a meritocracy, or
> simply a Google party to which we are all invited. Ease of development and
> federation etc is all very well, but who pulls the strings and decides how
> we all dance?
You're absoloutely right. Google stand to gain control and leverage
out of this technology if it is adopted. Why else would they invest
at least 200 man years development into such a project?
At the protocol level Wave operates peer-to-peer, in much the same way
as Email (SMTP) does, except in a more secure and spam resiliant
manner. As for whether the standards process operates as a
meritocracy? Well that's still to be seen; though obviously Google
will want (and given their investment deserve) a significant say in
how the standard evolves). The protocol specifications etc... are all
currently granted under the Apache style license, which means that
Google have largely waived any patent rights they might have over the
technology to those wishing to build their own wave systems, which
they would be free to relicense as they wish.
I have high hopes for the standardisation track this will take, as the
logical progression would be for Google to push them into either the
XMPP Standards Body as an XEP, or perhaps to go down the RFC route....
I don't know much about the internal politics of these organisations,
but both have a good track record of producing good specifications.
Jabber was originally an opensource project and protocol that decided
to formalise itself into a standard, and associated standards body...
It seems to me that there might be a similar Jabbers transition to
XMPP and Wave's transition to an XEP.... Though I'll be the first to
admit that anything could happen! I merely see lots of potential; and
it looks like Google are going about things the right way.... Offering
wave to the XEP process or IETF at the right point in time (i.e. when
wave has been battle tested a bit more) seems like a good idea.
This said, I share your worry about Google's leverage over the
internet... And yes, wave will doubtless help them exert pressure in
many more markets and become more successful than they already are.
> Also, as has been pointed out to me by colleagues who know far more about
> collaboration and user experience etc than I, this just looks like little
> more than SubEthaEdit style collaborative editing and threaded conversation,
> and has not attempted to solve some of the more difficult problems in online
> collaboration. It has also been suggested that one of the great things about
> the Web is that hyperlinks subvert hierarchy [1] and Wave's threading appears
> to reintroduce the latter.
I disagree. Though you're right that we've all seen wave like
features elsewhere... Infact, I'd usually be the first to contend
that there's no such thing as an original idea!!!
That doesn't mean that wave isn't a big deal; or a potentially
landmark innovation. SubEtha style editing mixed with proper
threading and review, along with integrated support for editing of
incredibly dynamic, rich document formats is a huge leap forward...
When you consider that this is done, over an open protocol that other
applications can leverage is a potentially massive improvement on
older implementations.
I sympathise with your fear of hierarchy... However, the truth isn't
as simplistic as hyperlinks trumping hierarchy or vice versa.... The
truth is that communication is the art of allusion and that hyperlinks
are to hierarchy as yin is to yang. Niether alone provides a
sufficient means to representation or understanding.... It is useful
to subvert hierarchy with linking, and to impose hierarchy on links.
Wave seems to support this dual nature, allowing both hierarchical
conversations and linked conversations. Indeed Waves and webpages can
link to waves, links can be embedded in waves, waves can be embedded
in web pages, and web pages can be embedded in waves!!
It seems to me that wave does indeed solve many existing problems with
online communication... Whilst it will doubtless bring many problems
of its own, I'm curious as to what difficult problems you think it
leaves on the table?
An interesting conversation,
R
> Cheers,
>
> Andrew
>
> [1] - E.g. see
>
> http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/hyperlinks_v_hierarchy.html
> http://www.chrisbrogan.com/cluetrainplus10-links-subvert-hierarchies/
>
> On (09:55 03/06/09), Rick Moynihan wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> If you've not yet heard about Google Wave, then the best explanation
>> is probably the developer preview of Google Wave; recently announced
>> at Google I/O: http://wave.google.com/
>>
>> So what's so exciting about Wave?
>>
>> Well, it's an open protocol, built on top of Jabber/XMPP and tightly
>> integrated with the web that intelligently unifies a number of communication
>> styles. Wave fuses both realtime instant messaging capabilities with
>> a delayed, less interactive e-mail style of communication (for when
>> participants are off-line) with the notion of a structured shared
>> conversation; similar perhaps to a wiki.
>>
>> So this group is for people in or around Dundee who are interested in
>> wave and the future Internet it will support. Knowledge of wave is currently
>> limited primarily to the protocol specs and a handful of API's...
>> (Google will soon open source a reference implementation for their
>> wave server and client.). This group hopes to improve our collective
>> understanding of wave, by providing community support. We intend to
>> organise a meeting in Dundee as soon as possible to give participants
>> of this group a chance to discuss Wave in person.
>>
>> If there are any people interested in wave development in or around
>> Dundee, Scotland, then we invite you to join our Google Group:
>>
>> Dundee Google Wave 101
>>
>> http://groups.google.co.uk/group/dundee-google-wave-101
>>
>> We are a group of wave converts, who believe it to be a massively
>> disruptive technology.
>>
>> We hope to support those locally who are interested in wave
>> development, it's vision and potential impact on society. We are
>> planning some face-to-face meetings soon specifically on wave which I
>> will announce here.
>>
>> Though we're principally focused on Dundee/Scotland, don't let your
>> latitude and longitude stop you from joining in and sharing your thoughts
>> about Google Wave with us on the Wave 101 group!
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> R.
>>
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>
> --
> Andrew Back
> a...@smokebelch.org
>
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