I said this in a Wave that a video editing site started yesterday, in response to others attempting to figure out how to make Wave into a replacement for forums:
At least in the short term, there’s no use in trying to make Wave a forum or online help desk. Creative Cow and others work well for that.
Wave is at its base a collaborative tool. Once you add in too many people or widen the point of a given wave, it loses most of its usefulness.
The better way to use wave is as tool to achieve an end. If we already have video that we need to edit, we load it up in FCP or AVID, but if we have nothing we start in AE or similar programs. Same with Wave. Just because it exists does not mean we have to find a way to use it like we’ve used other tools.
Rather, we should take its strengths (collaboration) and apply the tool when it is needed.
That’s video production specific, but the point is something that’s frustrating me and applies to everyone on Wave. Google Wave, as Google’s engineers created it, is a replacement for email specifically intended to help collaboration. To collaborate is to work together towards a goal or end.
Google Wave has some really cool potential for increasing online collaboration – but it’s a very specific tool. What is frustrating me is this idea that “we have the tool, therefore we must use it!” It’s a common human tendency. If you go buy a hammer, you really want to start knocking stuff around. And stuff may need knocking around. But it might not.
If you didn’t need to collaborate last week, then just because you have a tool to collaborate this week does not make collaboration a necessary thing this week. It is a waste of time to create a need so you can use a tool – a waste of time that could be used in other productive means.
Furthermore, when we get a new tool that we don’t yet understand, we immediately try to understand it from a familiar viewpoint. We have to fit it into the paradigms we already have, so that we can “conquer” the new tool. We take the motor driven vehicle that has been given to us to revolutionize transportation, and try to hook it to the horses that have been pulling our carts. Then we complain how it’s too heavy and our horses already got us to new places well enough.
So please, stop it with the Google Wave. Sign up, learn how the tool works from a technical aspect, but don’t try to make collaborations happen because you have a tool for collaboration. If Wave has revolutionary potential, it will be discovered – you might even be the one to discover it! But it will be discovered by people who have the right need for the tool and then apply the tool properly.
Until then, you’re just replacing the perfectly adequate with the newfangled for the sake of being cutting edge, and you’re missing the whole point. So stop.
Good post. I’m not sure how anyone will “discover” wave’s “revolutionary potential” without playing with it and discovering what it is and isn’t, but I generally agree with deploring adopting tools for the sake of adopting tools. Most of the time I sit back and let other people figure out if something is worth using or not.
A lot of using tools for the sake of using tools happened when the Twitter clones launched and you had respected “social media gurus” flocking to them and saying they were the next Twitter. So much for those who call themselves social media experts.
Totally agree. The quasi-tech-savvy public at large wanted to believe Wave was another revolutionary communications tool. It’s not. It’s a collaboration platform.
If you were already doing that, it will help.
If you want to put yourself into position to do that, it will help.
If, like me, you were frequently marked “does not play well with others” on your report card as a kid, it shan’t help you one whit.
lwh.
“It is a waste of time to create a need so you can use a tool – a waste of time that could be used in other productive means.”
You have absolutely no future in upper-level management.
I agree that it is for collaboration and there are broad horizons for that, but why was it pushed by so many media outlets as the “wave” of the future? Mixed signals from media sources people already trust mixed with the invite-only mystique really clouded the waters. I think people understand what it is for but are more surprised that it isn’t the miracle cure-all end-all that it was touted to be by many in the blogosphere / twittosphere.
Great thoughts Winston. I’ve been thinking about this lately after listening to a talk by Neil Postman. The first question he says we should pose when a new technology arrives is: “What is the problem the new technology solves?”
I wonder how much my enthusiasm for exploring a new technology is blinding me to how much I’m warping its ideal scope.
I’ve been pretty fascinated by it and have likely contributed to the buzz:
http://natene.ws/post/246834583/localizing-google-wave-to-nashville
How much is it improving my life? I haven’t answered the first question from Postman, so I’m scared to the answer to this one.
I would encourage folks like Christian to continue to push its limits, especially since Christian has a content focus on technology and collaboration.
Here’s the hour video from Postman if you’re interested: http://bit.ly/52hfsd