The generic concepts and the open platform will enable levels of interoperability that we haven't seen before. Google seems to have struck a good balance between offering a generic interface, in order to build different applications, and just adding enough semantics to ensure that the same API's are relevant for the intended uses.
To clarify this, let's compare with SOAP: while SOAP webservices are very generic. It's a technical standard where you define your own API's and semantics for every application you think of.
On the other hand, many succesful standards are very specific, and therefor limiting their use. RSS is a fine protocol and way for one-way communication, but it stops there. Err, does it really ? Put a powerful search on top of RSS, and there you have Twitter. But does it "work" perfectly well ? If you start a twitter "conversation" the information is not captured into a unit, and will be very hard to retrieve afterwards. So yes, two way communication is possible, but this illustrate that water comes through the cracks when protocols get "abused" for stuff they aren't meant for.
As long as we're talking information that can be represented in text, and a process of communication or collaboration ... it looks like we'll be able to handle that with one single protocol.
Maybe it's a dream and reality will soon kick in, but really, the examples shown in the demonstration are just the tip of the iceberg.
Just like email has become an important chain in many processes, waves might become a cornerstone in every day workflows as well. The amount of communication that we are involved with has been rising without stop. As far as I know, there are no tools available yet that seamlessly blend this all together. This is exactly what might get accomplished with waves.
It's going to be an interesting journey ... and wavewatch is in for the ride.
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