O'Reilly just blew up my buzzword-o-meter with "Federated Wave Clouds" and "a world in which messages no longer need to be sent from one place to another, but could become a conversation in the cloud."

So instead of sending messages to someone we just send it "in the cloud" and our federated waves generate a response?

Maybe O'Reilly intentionally reinforces vague and confusing terminology in order to publish more books explaining what should have been stated using simple terms in the first place.

Let's give it a try: Google Wave adds structure and web functionality (think embedable widgets) to conversations in a more meaningful and semantic way than normal text-only threaded email and IM. A Wave server uses an XMPP extension to allow peer-to-peer communications thereby removing reliance on sole providers for communications infrastructure.