Ten years ago, nobody knew what it was to "blog" or "text" or "tweet" or "IM".

So what new thingee will we be doing 2-3 years from now?

I predict that we'll be "waving", thanks to Google.

What is the "wave"?  Well, it's hard to describe.  Basically, the folks at Google were wondering why we communicate in different ways — email vs. chat, conversation vs. documents, etc.  They decided to combine it all.  The result they got?  Google Wave.

Oh, it's not out yet.  But this is how Google describes it:

Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

Here's a pic (click to embiggen):

Yeah, ok.  Cool.  But here's the $64,000 question: why?  I guess it might be good if two or more people are collaborating on, say, a screenplay or something.  In fact, that might be kind of fun.  But what other uses might it have?

In the end, I suppose it doesn't matter.  There's no "why" to Twitter or Facebook either, but people seem to gravitate to it.

So I'm going on the record as predicting that in 2011, we'll all be "waving".  For better or for worse.