Week 8: The Google Docs Container

This week's reading by McKenzie reminded me of the Google Doc's editing functions. I still remember my first time using Google Docs. I started by creating an account and then my group members shared the collaborative document with me so that I could work on it. I loved that everyone's parts were in one place, in one document, and that any changes that were made by one person would be instantly available to the rest of the group when they log on to see the document. Along with Google Docs, Google Sheets, Slides, Forms, and Drawings all support multiple editing access on a computer or mobile device.

One late evening when I was working away on my part of the written assignment, I saw a little window pop up, and text starting to randomly appear! Paragraphs were being moved, fonts, colours, margins - everything was mysteriously changing. I realized someone was typing: working on the document at the same time as me! I was initially horrified. It was as if the document had come alive and become this weird space that wasn't exactly instant messaging (although there is a chat function as well), but a type of space/container model that allowed us to edit each other's work as we were doing it.

My group member then scrolled down and fixed a couple of grammatical errors I had made and then scrolled back up to work on his part. I proceeded to ignore his presence and wrapped my part up as quick as I could. Besides the fact that I found it highly distracting to see someone else engaging and altering the container we were both using -- I strongly feel that it's an unnatural space. The edits that are made by others in real time are visible to all others working on the file and it makes the content and the container weirdly dynamic. Even though it's a word document that functions like a MS Word document (for example print and save options, it doesn't feel authentic to work in that space. Instead, it feels like some kind of user-document relationship is being horribly violated. I would even argue that this Google feature is itself an entirely new container.

See for yourself: