google wave social medium

[Adam Blatner]

Dear All, this message intrigues and bothers me. It intrigues me because there is stuff 
happening out there on the cutting edge. I don't doubt that some of it is good for some 
people, and some of it might be good for most people, but there is also the possibility 
that some of it is extensively time-consuming and energy-draining with a low yield of 
actual relevance. This is my wariness about a variety of types of social media.
       It bothers me because I've reached a point in my life where I question whether I'll 
be able to achieve or accomplish my "bucket list" of high-priority items that I feel 
called to pursue. I have a number of books and papers and ideas that I want to put out 
there, ponder, work through, clarify, revise, and this is what I've realized is my dharma 
or duty.
       I used to be more adventurous, probing into things that were perhaps more 
peripheral, but I feel less inclined to be distracted this way.

       What intrigues me is that I know I shouldn't dismiss one of the variety of options. 
It's like other things at the frontiers of a developing field, such as, for example, 
alternative healing. There are at least a thousand remedies---many panaceas, 
all-purpose---or at least claiming to do many things---that have been developed in the 
last 20 years. I would even be willing to concede that perhaps as many as 50 were valid, 
and if they were valid, at least 30 would revolutionize our paradigms of what certain 
disease processes and perhaps even healing and life itself is about.  I welcome these 
revolutions.
        However, we are still in the time when it is entirely unclear WHICH of the 
thousand are one of these truly effective remedies, and which ones are like the thousands 
of remedies that have been proposed in medicine and other fields over the last centuries. 
A few were frauds and the proponent knew it; many were simplistic approaches or 
complicated ones propounded in great sincerity by innovators who weren't so great on the 
key scientific question, "but is it so?"  All of these are competing for the status of 
"yes, it has been adequately proven," but few have really stepped up to the plate of 
submitting a theory or method or medicine to rigorous testing.

      So it may be with methods of psychotherapy, the new types of social media, etc.

     Archetypally, what is being played out is the complex of "puer" (Latin = boy) full of 
enthusiasm but not always cautious playing off the "senex" complex of the cautious old 
person... though young people can also express this "whoa, wait a minute, just because 
it's new doesn't mean it's good" sensibility.

     Thoughts?  Warmly, Adam
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Brodie" <iam at internode.on.net>
To: "Group talk Listserv" <list at grouptalkweb.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 11:01 PM
Subject: google wave social medium


> Hi,
>  Does anyone do google wave?
> It is a combination of instant messenger, IRC, bulletin board, email, collaborative 
> document developer and multimedia albumn. Some new elements but the easily accessible 
> integrated combination is its strength.
> In my (limited) experience, warmups are more sustained than any other social networking 
> medium.
> The grip on privacy is obvious and easy. (Facebook is getting better in this regard too. 
> You have always had a lot of control and how to implement it is getting more clear)
>
> I am just wanting others to play with at the moment to see what is possible and maybe 
> get something worthwhile arising in this domain.
>
> robtbrodie at googlewave.com
>
> Here is a quote I came across illuminating the name
>
> "Etymology
>
> The name was inspired by the Firefly television series in which a Wave is an electronic 
> communication (often consisting of a video call or video message). During the developer 
> preview, a number of references were made to the series such as Lars Rasmussen replying 
> to a message with "shiny", a word commonly used in the series to mean cool or good, and 
> the crash message of Wave being a popular quotation from the series: "Curse your sudden 
> but inevitable betrayal!".
>
> During an event in Amsterdam, The Netherlands it became apparent that the sixty strong 
> team that is currently working on Wave in Sydney, Australia, use Joss Whedon-related 
> references to describe, among others, the Sandbox-version of Wave (which is called 
> Dollhouse after the current TV-series by Firefly-producer Joss Whedon which is aired on 
> Fox in the USA). The development of external extensions is codenamed "Serenity", after 
> the spaceship used in Firefly and the 2005 motion-picture spin-off of Firefly, Serenity. 
> To prevent copyright issues with Fox, Universal Pictures and Whedon's production company 
> Mutant Enemy, Google would not confirm any reference to Firefly, Joss Whedon or 
> Serenity. "
>
> Rob
>
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