Yesterday night, I started rewatching an episode of Firefly (while weeping uncontrollably at the cancellation of such a great show).

At around 1:20 on the fifth episode (not by airdate), Safe, a conversation occurs between a young Simon Tam and his Dad, Gabriel Tam.

Simon: Did you get my wave?

Gabriel: I got it. Your text shorted. I got the whole thing during a board meeting. Thank you.

Simon: If I had a dedicated source box, it wouldn’t short out. I lost half my essay.

Gabriel: Yes, and you would’ve have access to any “tyen-shiao duh”* that filtered in from the Cortex. I absolutely forbid it.

**According to this awesome compendium of Chinese phrases in Firefly, “tyen-shiao duh” (天曉得/天晓得) means “Heaven Knows What”.*

Recently, a bunch of invitations were sent out for Google Wave, a new communication project by Google. For a moment, I thought maybe it was possible that Google Wave was somehow inspired by this little conversation… but instead, I thought little of it since the idea of a “wave” seemed just ubiquitous enough in general sci-fi.

Turns out, Someone from Whedonesque already made the connection:

The presentation includes the lead programming engineers and project managers making multiple Firefly/Serenity references and even the “Wave” program itself prints the words, “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” at the bottom of the screen when it unexpectedly crashes (it’s still in development).

A couple of fun little notes, if this little conversation actually took place in a world where Google Wave has united all communication.

• “Your text shorted.”: I think that the word “text” means something else here. Any ideas?

• “I got the whole thing during a board meeting.” Maybe Gabriel didn’t set his settings properly… but I’m fairly certain that as things are today, it won’t push things to you, unless you’re logged in. Maybe there’s some awesome third party apps action going on. Or… maybe you’re logged into Wave all the time.

• “… A dedicated source box…” Since the whole thing is open source (and quite a bit of XMPP magic, might I add), I wouldn’t doubt that a dedicated “source” box would be fun to play with.

• “I lost half my essay.” That still happens? I’m pretty sure Wave starts saving things as soon as you start typing them. Regardless, are applications not able to save every single character that we type, including all the fun metadata (when was it typed, where in the universe it was typed, even… how hard it was typed on the keyboard)? Heck, do we even type anymore? I’m already missing the point by thinking about the future in such present terminology.

• “… Filtered from the cortex.” Too open? Parental controls?

I’m having too much fun with this. And actually reading the comments from the Whedonesque post, there seems to be a bit more references to waves.

Not only is this post discussing the nerdy in a fictional universe, it’s also a friendly reminder for you to go back and rewatch Firefly. Chances are if you’re reading this, you have already done so multiple times.