The technophiles are asking: what will people use Google Wave for? What does it do best? What will it do to email and chat? Will it flop?

These questions are obvious, thought-provoking, and cool. But they miss the point. Technological 'advancement' is change--never neutral, never the status quo. Thus we should move less quickly from considering its morality. What will we destroy by accepting it? What does it force us to leave behind? What does accepting it force us to accept about ourselves?

I am no moral philosopher, but after watching a few videos about Google Wave, I wonder: what does it mean that any part of conversation can be edited by any participant? The Wikipedia crowd will say: it means the sum of human knowledge. But what does it mean for wisdom? If everyone can own every word, can anyone? Will we be responsible for what we produce in a google wave? This technology alters our interaction, hence ourselves. Is this alteration desirable? Why?

Maybe that is a poor attempt at asking the question behind the questions. But we should start here.

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I am reading Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, by Neil Postman.