SLIS Professor Susan Herring was recently quoted in an article in the New Scientist. The article, “Innovation: The Psychology of Google Wave” (by Tom Simonite, October 9, 2009), talks about the new Google Wave, a "real-time communication and collaboration" system. "Innovation is a regular column that highlights emerging technological ideas and where they may lead."

The Wave allows users to create documents like web pages that other users can view, edit, and comment on. The Wave’s distinct features are live typing and a replay option. Susan Herring gave the following quotes about the functions of and the future of The Wave:

• “Past research has shown that the real-time, synchronous, nature of instant messaging (IM) encourages an informal tone, says Susan Herring, who researches the convergence of computer communication platforms at Indiana University in Bloomington. ‘It invokes face-to-face communication and encourages people to use conversational strategies,’ she explains.
• Seeing live typing may accentuate that effect, but Wave can also be asynchronous, like email. ‘We won't see the difference between the two types of communication disappear,’ says Herring. ‘More elaborate messages are still possible, but when the other person is online you will be drawn to a more informal style.’ The pace and style of communicating with Wave will be more varied than with email.”
• “‘Replaying a Wave gives an even more tangible and reliable feeling for the history of a relationship,’ Herring explains, compared to the way email threading and sorting quickly breaks down, hiding chronology.”
• “That may also help reduce the misunderstandings that can blight email communication, says Herring: when people don't pick up that a comment is meant as a joke, for instance. ‘You have a multiplicity of channels to repair the conversation.’”

p>Herring is also the Editor-in-Chief of Language@Internet.

Posted Oct. 20, 2009