One of the less-well-advertised side effects of responsive, data-driven technology is its ability to depress the living hell out of you. Recall the moment when the running tally in TurboTax turns from comforting black "Anticipated Refund" to an alarming red "Amount You Owe" and your mental movie of cut abruptly from Caribbean beaches to ramen noodles. Or the time you changed your dating profile body type from "Normal" to the more forthright, "A Few Extra Pounds" and watched your number of potential matches plummet as your publicly acknowledged weight climbed.
While it's true that math calculations have been delivering bad news ever since the Sumerians first began making golf tee-shaped marks on lumps of clay, today's global data network can disenchant from afar and do it more quickly and thoroughly than ever before, in realms of human experience long untouched by the meaty paw of Big Data. (No wonder that with every well-documented bummer just a Google search away, so many people spend their screen time building redoubts of shared denial. )
My most recent episode of awful truth delivered via asynchronous server query came the last time they upgraded Gmail, a new build which came about when a Mountainview, California-based software engineer remarked over his cafeteria tray of trout almondine that Gmail's tony exclusivity (you must have at least one human connection on earth in order to use it) might not in itself be enough lock-in its user base for the rest of this geological epoch. Once the gasps had subsided he went on to propose the development of a new Gmail, vastly improved by the addition of "features and stuff." At this point, a fatherly senior developer reminded him in sternest tones that this wasn't the "Google way" and that Google developers weren't put on this earth in order to fine-tune the usability of already-popular apps, but instead to adorn the web with more abandoned beta APIs than there were stars in the firmament or half-assembled lawnmower engines on a meth addict's lawn.
Despite the institutional push-back, the Gmail upgrade eventually went live. Immediately I noticed the biggest improvement to its "getting all up your business" functionality: its ability to instantly file incoming emails into "Important" and "not so much" categories as soon as they arrived in my POP account, a triage process that used to take me weeks if it happened at all.
So, for a while now, Gmail has weighed my emails in the balance and more often than not it has found them wanting. Its codebase quickly determined that nearly all my incoming mail was insignificant enough to siphon into its not-quite-the-thing "Everything else " folder while, my "Important" folder sat, there like a high school wallflower in taffeta gown and braces, waiting for somebody, anybody to come up and say hello (OK, maybe not anybody. I draw the line at lonely hearted devotchkas from Minsk and temporarily out-of-pocket Nigerian millionaires.).
Maybe you're expecting me to complain about Google's arbitrary and error-prone way of prioritizing my email. I won't because. I can't. With a few rare exceptions, Gmail does a scarily good job at sorting out what doesn't matter (damn near everything), from what does (far too little). And of course, its spam filter is so discerning that when I first switched to Gmail, I flattered myself that the sudden drought of emails promising endowments to rival the Rockefeller Foundation's was because word had finally gotten around. But no. Gmail knows what really matters. The paucity of exciting stuff in my inbox (I imagine Willy Loman's looked much the same.) is nobody's software bug, but a fairly accurate snapshot of what is (at least for now) an undramatic life.
But the boring message list is not without an upside. I'm sure that somewhere in the algorithmic depths of its heart, Google mail knows that inboxes short on credible big money offers and lusty come-ons from a string of real-life lovers more than likely belongs to somebody with a decent, steady job, a supportive long-term relationship and a kid. Nothing cements your squarejohn status like having kids, creatures fashioned by the evolution to continue the species, but not before telling their parents they're really boring. Still, (I tell myself) it's a good kind of boring. It's got the things I longed for and missed back when checking my Erols.com email on my Power Mac 7200 was a walk on the wild side. And for that I'm more grateful than depressed.
So thanks for the insight, Google. I'll do my best to take it in the constructive spirit intended. And if any of your future APIs should include a "countdown to death" clock, please make sure it's an opt-in feature.
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