Google Wave

If you’re anyone, you’ve heard of Google Wave. The revolutionized new way of thinking and using the internet. It’s like e-mail and IM in one with live typing. Yes, you watch the other person make typos live! You can turn that off though.

Anyway, I’m writing this because I have Google Wave, and I love Google Wave, and I have free invites to Google Wave! Invites are how you can get GW, since it’s in beta right now. Sneaky, sneaky, Google…. Anywho, if you would like a GW invite, you can DM me on Twitter, or shoot me a comment below with the e-mail you’d like to use. Just be aware, that it may take a while. I waited 2 weeks after being invited to get in.

Also, it’s not amazingly fantastic just now. I mean, they don’t even have Settings page yet. That’s why it’s in beta testing. So if your patient and can wait for the full blown awesomeness, this is for you. If you’re looking for a full featured product wait a few more months or years. And in the words of Dr. Wave below, Happy Waving!!

The Internet Is Real

Every once in a while I run across one of those anti-internet/anti-social media people. You know the ones, they get a facebook or a Twitter but then delete it because it’s “fake” and you can’t keep in touch with “real people,” or have a “real relationship” with people. They just dismiss the internet like it’s an inferior form of communication. Well, that really irks me, because I’ve met some of the best people online. And sure, some forms of the communication are missing, like facial expressions, body gestures, tone of voice, etc. And admittedly, some people probably would ever be friends “in real life”  because of prejudices thinking, “they’re too ugly,” or, “they sound stupid,” that we usually use to sort people.

But on the internet, the words and the ideas are still there… that’s what matters. People who have just met, say in a chat room, can just dive into deeper conversations getting to the core of our person faster and know who we really are. Because, honestly, it’s easier to open up when you don’t see someone’s facial expression. We can pretend we didn’t cringe when someone types that they’re 41 and when you thought they were 28, and you can keep talking. Point here being, we can set aside any visual prejudice and just have open, raw conversations with anyone. And I’ve found that the internet is the place where I have some of my richest conversations, that last the longest. Not in one sitting, but in talking over months and years.

And now for a hilarious quote from an acquaintance I saw leaving facebook… his reasons were, “Because the internet is the most fake and illegitimate form of meeting people and maintaining communications, I’ve ever encountered. I could just be doing better things with my time.” Sir, if you ever happen to read this, I have met a countless number of worthwhile people on the internet, and it has been my strongest tool of maintaining communications. Especially with my friends across the country from summer programs. One friend in particular I e-mailed daily for a year and a half, and we still e-mail each other now at least twice weekly. Another I’ve been in contact with for nearly four years now.

Saying that, I want to ask those people, who dismiss the internet as a “real” form of communication then,  if they don’t read books, or have never been effected by a poem, because that’s the same thing. It’s the use of words for communication. As my friend Wil (@javajunky) said in our online conversation about this, “Text can convey a lot. Literature would be nowhere if it weren’t true.”

I fell that dismissing online communication is pointless for that reason. And if these people only want a “full relationship,” face to face with “real people,” then they better stop using phones, reading the news, and watching TV too, because those all dilute the full on experience you get face to face with another person. So, good luck, hypocrites. I’d like to keep all of my online friends right here. And who knows, someday I may get to meet them “IRL” as well.

Productivity

So, we all remember those classes in high school and college, those little filler classes that were only there to fulfill some sort of requirement, right? They were really boring, and usually quite easy? Well, I’m in one of those right now.

Environmental science. It has nothing to do with my art major. I can see how it could be an interesting class, but the format that this one is in, I find it highly boring. The professor drones on and on, reading from a really boring PowerPoint slides, and often spins off into irrelevant tangents. The only interesting point about my professor is that she’s from Kenya (as in Africa) so she has an interesting accent. But she actually speaks in really low tones, and that classroom is usually warm, so I end up feeling really sleepy and I usually nod off in class along with most of the other 80 people in here.

My solution? Laptop! Now, I just come to class (“participation points”) and work on my laptop. This class is now one of my most productive hours of the day. I answer e-mails and send out group messages for my student organization, edit photoshop documents I’m working on, write blog posts, and read news through my feed reader. I’ll occasionally glance up at the PowerPoint in class, but since it’s at a 9th grade level, I usually know everything or it’s common sense and I go back to work. So, what’s the point of these “required” classes again?

Does anyone else find this to be the case?