[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ[/youtube]

I am not usually the kind of person who watches hour long YouTube videos, especially geeky developer previews of new technology, but I just spent the last hour and twenty minutes watching the developer preview of Google Wave, and I am totally blown away. It looks like Google has done for email what the Iphone did for the plain vanilla cell phone. Taking advantage of the near real-time communication that HTML 5 is going to make possible, Google has made a web-based application that combines e-mail, instant messaging, photos, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, real-time games, an incredible translation tool, and pretty much any other application under the sun, all in one place.

The potential sea-change evident in the idea of communicating in “waves” instead of e-mails, is tantamount to the shift in communication that took place with the invention of e-mail itself, and while I was watching the video I couldn’t help but think of the several potential communications nightmares that Google Wave will make possible. Indeed, communicating in real-time without the aid of body language sounds like it could be a potential disaster for interpersonal relationships. Not only can you now accidentally send that rant about your boss to the entire office, but your boss can reply immediately while everyone else you sent it to watches in real time—the simultaneous eruption of laughter would be enough to make anyone think twice before hitting click ever again. And the new netiquette surrounding just how much and how often to change someone’s original wave, or how often to comment in-text, or who to send games or photos to, should be interesting. Indeed, the entire idea of real-time collaborative communication means that we will have to be much more careful and thoughtful about how we communicate online. Whether or not we actually will, of course, remains to be seen.

Although it is easy to gush about Google, and Google Wave does indeed seem like a great and entirely new way to communicate online, there are plenty of other reasons for concern. For one thing, in order for “waves” to work, they must be accessible to all of the recipients simultaneously. This means that Google must store all of its “waves” in one central server, meaning that any wave ever sent will, in all likelihood, be available for a very long time. The legal and civil rights implications of this seem endless, especially considering that many waves will contain information from many different people, so if the FBI or CIA wants to investigating someone you’ve communicated with, they may also be, by default, investigating you, your friends, family, and anyone else unlucky enough to be involved in one of your “waves.” Even more disturbing, of course, is that Google will have access to all of this information without a subpoena, and, although Google has vowed not to be evil, mission statements change. But what really scares me about Wave, and frankly, everything that Google does, is that they do what they do so well, so fast, and with such charm and aplomb that issues surrounding the consequences of the technology are often not raised until it’s too late. Google may be making “waves” with this new application, but the force of its technology is more like a tsunami.

Of course, this is the nature of all web technology, which seems to have a mind of its own, and thrives on the idea of the invisible hand of the market. In other words if people like it and use, it must be good. Any psychologist, however, can tell you this is simply not true, and that people tend to use what’s available to them and have a very hard time resisting temptations when they are so ubiquitous. And that is perhaps what concerns me most about this new technology. I mean, it’s cool, but do we really need all of this? Is it not just another added distraction to receive a new “wave” every time somebody involved in a project or conversation has something to say? If you think you get a lot of messages in your in-box now just wait. Should I really so easily have the opportunity to play video games with my co-workers online or share my Facebook updates with them? And does this new technology not just make it that much easier to avoid and even forget the often necessary face to face communication that is so vital for healthy personal and professional relationships? Lastly, do we really need to be spending so much time connected to the internet? I mean, I just spent the last hour and twenty minutes of my Friday night watching a YouTube video, for Christ’s sake. Imagine all the other things I could have been doing.