Google's Plan to Make an OS Obsolete

Last year, I heard talk about a new tool Google was inventing. Google Wave is an application that can be installed in Internet browsers that allows multiple users to basically share a desktop. Google Wave will allow for the instantaneous (that's certainly become a Web 2.0 buzzword) sharing and editing of documents, the ability to play games together, have an IM conversation, and much more. It is basically the best of every neat web tool put together in one easy to use/see flow. Kinda like a RSS feed on Ritalin. Or an iPhone in a browser. Well, you get the idea.

Google Wave, if done successfully, (and Google certainly has an excellent track record) could mark the turning point of something greater, bigger, than Web 2.0...perhaps, and you heard it here first, Web 3.0? Google Wave will make everything that came before it obsolete, as anything you could want to do is available right in your Internet browser. Need to edit a document and share it with a colleague? Simply place it in Wave and you can edit it together. Need to have a web cam conversation with your spouse and review your finances? Simply open up a web cam chat window in Wave and share a document. And, if there is something you do need to do but can't find on Wave, clever Google has made it an "open source license" basically saying that amateur and not so amateur developers can make widgets and new features for the Wave. It is a constantly evolving microcosm of the Internet.

So, I admit, not most teens are like me. Many teenagers do not get excited over the latest and greatest in Internet technology. A lot of them, quite frankly, don't care. Why should they? Well, because, if they want to exist and thrive in the future, they're going to have to become adept at the usage of these new Internet products. Technology is a very slippery slope; once you fall behind, it becomes almost impossible to keep up with the newest and best ideas conjured by the nerdiest minds on the planet. Just as our parents had to learn how to use a computer, the Internet, and communication tools, we will have to learn even more advanced technology to compete in the job market. Imagine, if you will, a 2010 high school graduate twenty years from now. They haven't kept up with the technology, as they don't care, but a 2030 high school knows the ins and outs of recent technological breakthroughs simply because they lived through it and experienced it. Why would an employer hire someone who would take months to learn new info when they could hire a bright, fresh new mind?

Technology is born out of necessity; perhaps, then, it is fair to say adaptation to technology is born out of the will to survive. A 21st century case of Social Darwinism where only those who know exactly what they're doing have any chance of surviving.