Google Wave

Tim O'Reilly has a nice digestable summary of Google Wave (a preferable option to the 1 hour and 20 minute demo video, also embedded in the post):

A key point here is that Google's relentless focus on reducing the latency of online actions is bringing the online experience closer and closer to our real world experience of face-to-face communication. When you're talking with someone, you know what someone is saying before they finish their sentence. You can respond, or even finish their sentence for them. So too with Wave...This leads to a change in behavior: conversations become shared documents.

The concept of conversation as shared document is pretty wild, if not a little scary. If Google Wave catches on--as well as other similar software that follows--we could see some huge rhetorical changes in communication. Suddenly, your own thoughts and text can potentially be transformed and rerouted before they reach their traditional "linear" destination. I wonder how this will be studied?