Writely for Human Evolution

This just in (in case you care): Writely has been acquired by Google. See here: http://writely.blogspot.com/2006/03/google-yep-google.html.

Recalling my mission to make valuable new web tools understandable to the less-webby masses, allow me to explain why *I* care. Writely is an online word processor - kind of like Word for the web. I've been using it for a couple of months, and I've grown rather fond of it. To me, it epitomizes many of the reasons why I get excited about web technology, at its best. Why? Because Writely has great potential for fostering collaboration.

The main thing that makes it different from Word is that multiple people can work on a document simultaneously (just not on the same sentence at the same time. Anything else goes.) Writely tracks all revisions as previous versions that you can refer back to, and eliminates forever the horrible experience of passing around multiple versions of the same document, clogged up with endless "tracked" changes.

So, for example, earlier this week I was asked to help some friends write copy for a software product that they're launching soon. I plugged the bare-bones I was given into Writely, and did my best to come up with clear, engaging text. Then I added the project lead to the document as a "collaborator", and together we worked, talking out loud sometimes and working independently at others. Once we were feeling pretty good about what we'd come up with, we added in another project member to look it over. He made a bunch of changes that I thought were terrific, and preserved the good in what had already been done.

Together the three of us fine-tuned our document, live on the internet, until we were satisfied. What emerged felt like a truly collaborative effort. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy, and it was very clear to me that what we had created using Writely was better than what any of us would have come up with alone. I'm also quite certain that it was better than what would have resulted had we passed around a Word document and all added our two cents at different times.

I think there's something about giving over to the flow, trusting the process, watching your words be changed by another... and letting the wisdom of the group emerge. That's what social software can facilitate, at its best. That's why I get excited about this stuff! Maybe if we build the right technology, it really will contribute to the emergence of new capacities in human consciousness. Then our challenge will be to learn wise use of our tools, and discernment about when the tech is helpful, and when it is actually distancing us from the presence and awareness required to move towards the evolution of our consciousness.

(Big words for a blogger, eh? Oh, and if I've sold you on Writely, get yourself on the new waitlist quick.)