I'm Living a Lie: Gmail Custom Time
I get the pitch, but it’s the same pitch as “what if you could lie and no one could catch you…except Google?” In no way can we look upon this development as an unmitigated good, unless by “good” we mean “I no longer have to manually change my computer clock’s time zone before emailing in that final paper.” Which, rest assured, is a phrase foreshadowed long ago by enterprising young Web Savvy Teens. Probably some of them are actually responsible for “Custom Time.” Stop — custom time! I can hear the development meetings now. There is probably a lot to be said about the possibilities for a revaluation of values inherent in the capture of vanguard technology by a particularly well-timed youth generation or two. But “Custom Time” promises to destroy yet another shred of the public trust that quaintly insists upon helping atomized individuals try to enjoy something more than a third-rate “sense” of community. “Don’t be evil” indeed! One can hardly imagine how emails will now function as admissible evidence in court, unless, of course, we’ve just ushered in an era of new expert witnesses, people sure to decipher the truth about when emails were really dated, information to which they are privy because, after all, they’re employed by Google.
PS Don’t even get me started on Google’s plans for organizing the world’s laughter, searching web pages 24 hours before their creation, or pairing up with Virgin to colonize Mars.
I’ve spent years striving to master my tendency to see time as fluid, immeasurable and unimportant because it makes me very unpopular among friends, employers and family when I do not. There are enough people around who still make life miserable for us time trespassers.
— Joules · Apr 1, 05:15 PM · #
have you perhaps been “got” by another gmail April Fools joke? I suspect so…
— Conor · Apr 1, 06:01 PM · #
James,
Don’t forget Gmail Paper !
I know you’re the postmodern conservative and all, while I am a simple unfrozen caveman optical engineer, but you have become too meta for my simplistic simian brain when you’re writing ironically serious posts about April Fools jokes, which function as April Fools jokes themselves. My head hurts…
— David Samuels · Apr 1, 06:04 PM · #
Does that “backdate your computer” thing really work? You may now be responsible for my slide into decadent and immoral living; it’s only my papers that were keeping me on the straight and narrow.
— Nicola · Apr 1, 06:30 PM · #
Clear proof that taking an April Fool’s Day joke seriously isn’t funny.
— Brendan Howard · Apr 1, 07:40 PM · #
Conor, are you being a wee bit of a sarcastic troglodyte? I’m happy just to throw out a comment that’s connected to the topic in a general sense and leave it at that. Do you think I really think James is serious?
— Joules · Apr 1, 09:22 PM · #