Having watched the Google Wave intro video. I am impressed. I think one of the greatest risks for Wave is that the idea may be so far ahead of its time that people won’t “get it.” There are a great number of people out there that are invested in private communications and the very idea of someone else editing their content (even if the audit history is there) will make them very uncomfortable. When you think of Google’s position, it’s clear that they are so far ahead of the curve that they can take risks and put stuff like this out there - which allows them to change the rules and get buy-in. I think most interestingly, Google is going to make this an open protocol - which is really the only way it can be successful. Think ‘http’, ‘ftp’, ‘smtp’ all these protocols needed to be widely available for implementation or they would have failed. While we have incredible challenges in our time, looking at things like Google Wave that require us to rely and trust each other more (and create, new efficient ways to share information), I can’t help but feel positive about what the future holds for us.