Google Wave and the Wild Frontier
In LIBR 559M, we’ve been discussing the permeable nature of personal and professional presentation online. It makes me think back to ARST 555, and the presentation we did about John McDonald’s article Managing Records in the Modern Office: Taming the Wild Frontier. Way back in 1995, McDonald wrote this excellent analysis of how the change to personal computers threw many kinds of traditional record-keeping. From the abstract:
From a record-keeping perspective, the modern office is like the wild frontier. Office workers can create and send electronic messages and documents to whomever they wish. They can store them according to their own individual needs and then delete them without turning to anyone else for approval. There are no rules of the road. The autonomy of the individual reigns supreme!
That is, as office hierarchy was changed by technology, traditional record-keeping strategies fell apart. As the personal computer became the location where records were made and kept, workers started thinking about those items as, well, personal. In a more general way, this happens to many people as we use new technologies. This applies to social media as well: for example, many professionals use Twitter for both personal and work-related information. Or, as Sarah Palin dealt with last year, we may use our personal email accounts for official business.
Anyway, I have been thinking about this in connection with Google Wave. I haven’t gotten to test it out yet, but I’ve been seeing interesting comments by archivists and records managers. As more and more functions can be incorporated into a single tool, it can really muddy the records being created. This is all the more true when creation can be done as a group, or individually but anonymously. My understanding is that Wave will permit more integration of the elements (IM, email, etc.) contributing to any activity. As Alan Bell notes, “Google seems to have created the first collaborative environment where context, conversation and object are captured together and can be rendered together as the record of any collaboration.” Wowza! Despite the challenges for actually figuring out what the record is, let alone how to preserve it long-term, that’s an exciting possibility. However, if folks are using their Google Wave accounts for both business and pleasure, the work of records managers and archivists becomes much, much messier.
