So you may have heard of Google Wave, the pioneering personal communication and collaboration tool that is going to Revolutionize Information Consumption and Digitize Interpersonal Interactions and generally become The Future of Internet Conversations and everything, probably. Once, that is, anyone can figure out how the thing actually works.
Indeed, Google Wave, for all the grandiose predictions attached to it, has joined rocket science, the theory of relativity, the meaning of life, the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu theorem, the final episode of the Sopranos, and Tom Delay’s recent retina-burning hip gyrations in the annals of Things Known Primarily for Their Inscrutability.
All of which makes the humor site EasierToUnderstandThanWave.com–which asks users to decide whether Wave or Scientology (and Wave or metaphysics, and Wave or damped harmonic oscillators, and Wave or the United States Tax Code, and Wave or women, etc., etc.) is more confusing–amusingly apropos. And the site’s soundtrack–a Muzaktastic version of Avril Lavgine’s “Complicated”–seals the deal.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.