Catching the wave

I once read a legend about Thor. Yes, that Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, who, along with Loki, was challenged to a number of contests by this king (we’ll call him “Bill”*). The king, Bill, challenged Thor to a foot race but used his magic to make Thor’s challenger the embodiment of Thought, which can’t be outrun. Thor was also challenged to a drinking contest and, although he can put a few down, he lost because that wily king had attached the sea to the bottom of the horn from which Thor drank,  and he couldn’t empty the sea (although this became the origin story for tides). Nifty stories, I know. But the one I liked best was when Loki was challenged to an eating contest and the king had made the challenger the embodiment of wildfire, which ate everything including the trough holding the food, before Loki had really started.

This last one is the one that sticks and I see it as a possible metaphor for Google.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all “Google is the Beast of Revelations” or anything. Actually, Google is doing some really cool stuff. What I mean by the story is that, having been looking more closely at Google Wave, I see a real potential for it to consume so many different elements of the internet experience: email, chat, collaborative tools, photo-sharing, social networking, forums, learning management systems, blah blah blah. It is both really exciting and kind of terrifying. What will it mean for the user? Certainly, greater convenience. But the management of so much information will require a new way of searching and securing and thinking and reading and writing and seeing…

I think that it will be the future. Open source, free, dynamic, all-encompassing (even Mozilla is supposedly responding with a new product that will be similar-ish, called Raindrop), but it is that “all-encompass-ment” that makes me nervous. I think the title of the poem by Stevie Smith says a lot, “Not waving but drowning.”

*The king’s name was actually Útgarða-Loki, but Bill is easier.