The Invention of Google Wave: A Play in One Act

Date: roughly one year ago. Two twenty-something google engineers (both decked out in blue google t-shirts and jeans) sit on their fitness balls. One sips some strange coffee-like concoction while the other downs an Odwalla drink. Engineer one checks his e-mail.

One: That jerk Larry from HR keeps top-replying to my emails. Seriously. Who the h#** uses top-reply these days?

Two: Everyone but nerds uses top-reply. Didn't you talk with new girl? She was an M$ intern last year, and apparently M$ mandates top-reply in their emails.

One: And what if you want to respond to multiple points in the e-mail?

Two: I think Outlook would have crashed by then.

One: Seriously, this is non-sense. We need to get some giant conspiracy going to make bottom-reply the default.

Two: I have an idea. How about we claim we're merging IM functionality with e-mail. But in reality we'll just be forcing people to use the indent-reply conventions nerds have been using for the past 40 years, and give people too stupid to setup IM notifications of email events the chance to get e-mail instantly.

One: That sounds awesome. We'll dress it up to look fancy, so people aren't so intimidated by the less than signs that would normally occupy the start of the line.

Two: I know. Heaven forbid people learn how to use conventions, or look at plain text.

One: Oh, and we can put in annoying features that geeks would hate! Maybe we can have it immediately show the person's reply, while they're typing! Heaven forbid people think before they respond, like us introverted nerds do with emails, so the hundreds of people getting our emails don't have to sit through our mistakes. We can cut out the subject line, too - it isn't like people use that to its potential.

Two: Those sound like exactly the sorts of nerd-hating features that'll launch this project into the big time! Let's get coding.

Curtains close as furious keyboard pounding commences.