I’m guessing someone in the dev team was a bit of a Firefly fan and thought the idea of a wave (the intergalactic version of an MMS on the show) was pretty good.

In the TV show (and the movie Serenity I think it may have had a mention.. don’t quote me on that) the galactic method of sending a video message is via a “wave”.

Really what this google wave is about is dragging more content through google’s vast data storage/analysis engines so that google adsense can spiral deeper into your communication habits. I’d settle for email getting widespread and ubiquitous encryption. It’s kinda ridiculous that we can’t easily send a secure email after so many years.