The Lost Lesson Of Instant Typing
jens.mooseyard.com
jens.mooseyard.com
This kind of editing isn't something you could have turned off by default in Wave, because otherwise you can't have multiple people editing the same thing at a time. For blips authored by one person, you could--and that'll be an option. I hope people don't use it, though.
What's wrong with drifting away? :)
This will sound cocky, but: I'm multitasking chat conversations simultaneously, can type fast, and can express my thoughts quickly. I'm sure a lot of Hackers are in this category. Why should I sit there with someone who's not so great at those things and watch them struggle along at typing, thinking, or pausing in the middle of a sentence because someone walked in the room? I'll be over here, just give me a visual beep and I'll instantly be back.
Put another way, I'm learning a foreign language at the moment, and I wouldn't dare want to put my native speaker friends through watching me find the right article...
If I want a high-bandwidth, high-commitment, high-intensity medium, (or to make my friends suffer through my horrible Dutch) I'll use voice or video.
Voice and video are fine, too, but there's no easy record of what happened, they're one-to-one only, and you still can't talk at the same time or edit what you say. And if you say something complicated, it can't be reread until grokked. Plus, you can't use them as easily with people you don't know as well.
Maybe I'm not explaining it clearly. I've just had great experiences with Wave so far, having discussions that I would have only been able to have in person (and would not afterward have a record of), at even higher speeds than I would have had in person. That's cool.
(And yes, a thousand times yes, sensible defaults. But even more than that, as few preferences/options as possible. I would much prefer people make a design choice, than no design choice.)
I would bet you actually spend more total time & mental energy reading a sequence of characters that keep disappearing and appearing than you do an IM conversation, where you can scan several (complete) lines in a second.
You can also multi-task and multi-convo on IM without being rude, which is why it's so much better than a phone call for technical conversations w/ colleagues.
The complaints, starting with Farhad Manjoo from Slate all boil down to this sentence, "I don't like instant type because it makes me feel like / shows that I am not as witty or well spoken if I can't carefully craft a message before sending, this makes me self conscious".
I think, perhaps, people just need to adjust to this new, old, form of communication. I suspect that this can deliver a similar experience to speech if users put in the time to develop new habits. In speech most languages / cultures have developed ways to show they are thinking mid sentence... This may be in the form of a sound "uhhhh" or a facial expression (furrowed brow). We just need an acceptable way to do this as we type.
I'm no longer worried if I'll sound stupid, though this did bother me when I used this feature on ICQ many years ago. I do worry about accidentally typing something rude, but I think I'm getting over this too. Communication really is much faster and more engaging this way. (It's also edifying to see how others compose their messages).
We have a similar problem with letting others see our code. The trick to getting over this is to just put it out there. In that spirit, I've made my writing of this message public at the link below; feel free to watch me stutter and change things. You can also try out live chat there, if you've never tried it before.
Live communication is full of repetition, verbal tics, and inexactness. Necessary mechanisms as one thinks out loud and mentally edits their own words until they circle in on the best expression of their idea. There are many downsides to this. For example, it's much easier to get into a meaningless argument as people stumble or become fixated on conversational detritus (the words and thoughts that would have been edited out of conversation in the final draft), either because people are needlessly confused by awkward wording or use of an inapt metaphor, or because they are being intentionally confrontational. Anyone who has ever read a transcript of a live interview has almost certainly been struck by the degree to which live speech seems convoluted, distracted, and poorly structured when compared to typical written communication.
I can see why google thought it was "neat" to put live chat into wave, it makes for a slick demo. But if their goal is to build a communication medium that is superior to existing technologies (phone, IM, email), then relying on live chat is a step in the wrong direction.
Obviously, Google Wave isn't the same thing but anyone following communications media over time should draw the conclusion that more information, more quickly, is no always useful.
No one wants their boss to see their undone hair, no one wants to have to respond in real time to some document and have their keystrokes visible. The delay of email as compared to chat, has it's advantages, otherwise some form of chat would have 'won' already.