What is Google Wave's FFT ?

If I recall my college Physics courses at all (which I really don't) a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) amounted to a decomposition of a complex waveform by representing it as a series of parameters that each represented a simple (Square?) wave.

So what is Google Wave's FFT?   What constituent parts does it decompose into?

Another way of asking the question might be to exploit the parable of the blind men and the elephant.  You know the one.  It's the story where 3 different wise men determine an elephant to be different things, because they can each only see part of the critter.  They each individually represent the component of the decomposition that they perceive as the entire nature of the elephant.

So on to further thoughts on Googles, Elephants, Waves, FFTs and (of course) communications.


We can, like, start speaking metaphorically, like, what is wave like?  (I'm practicing to become a, like, teenager).

• Wave is like IM, hmmm, no, more like email, well, not email, perhaps threaded email.  This train of observation is like grasping the elephant's tail.  Certainly the observation is correct, but i'm like, missing so much of the picture.  Lets try again.
• Wave is like a Wiki.  Again - correct, but a little incomplete. Combining two correct interpretations that are as disparate as WIKI and Webmail certainly leaves a lot of room for interpretation.  Perhaps the 3rd time will be lucky.
• Wave is like a Twitter stream.  Oh sure.  Climb on the bandwagon, dude (he mutters to himself). Certainly watching some of the usage of wave  it appears that this modality of use is something that meshes well with the user population.  Again we suffer the dissonance of inequality.  Wiki != Webmail != Feed.
• Gadgets and Bots make it like sort of like a Facebook, or potentially like an application in a cloud-based  SaaS offer.
• Of course it is a Social Networking site / tool / whatever, ...
• and Google has just proven that it is not a Buzz (for that is something different).

The essence of my point is that 1) everybody thinks of it in existing terms, which blinds us somewhat, and 2)  we don't really know what it is yet - usage will change it.  Just like Twitter morphs and evolves, so will Wave, and so will our use.

So if it is hard to understand, and hard to determine how to use it, or what it is for, then is it significant?  I would not want to bet the farm, but I will note that Wave is real-time, and so are most people that i know.  It is also supported by a large and patient company - it will have chance to grow (or die a slow death).

I await the mobile and native clients (perhaps embedded in Chrome OS), and enough of my community becoming users, in order to make it useful.  Time will tell, but I certainly will not bet against it.