Wave’s creators see e-mail as their main opposition. But might they face a challenge from an altogether different quarter? The rise of web-mail, instant messaging and web-based applications within companies are all examples of the broader trend of “consumerisation” of technology. From mapping sites to social networks, web-based software evolves much faster than desktop software, which often looks old-fashioned by comparison. “Knowledge workers can look outside the corporate firewall, and realise that everything out there is better, faster and makes them happier,” says Dr McAfee.

One consumer website in particular has already cracked the problem of building easy-to-use collaboration tools with mass appeal. Facebook, now the world’s largest social-networking site, allows over 300m users to chat, send messages, post comments, share links, photos and videos, play games, and form groups around shared interests or projects—most of the things that collaboration tools are expected to be able to do, in short. Furthermore it is free, and simple enough that users need no training. Like Wave, Facebook is also open to outside developers.

Facebook’s original users, college students, have graduated but still use the site, drawing in their peers in the process: the average Facebook user is now over 30 and a member of the workforce. So adding business-collaboration tools to Facebook would make sense. (Dustin Moskovitz, one of Facebook’s co-founders, has just raised funding for a new business-collaboration start-up called Asana.) Some bosses regard social networking as the epitome of online time-wasting. But Facebook, or Wave, or something very like them, could be the future of work.