As more and more information migrates from the page to the screen to the cell phone, InsideWork is looking into all kinds of applications that do all sorts of things which no longer require so much as a power cord let alone a full-size keyboard. Honestly, if it weren’t for caffeine procurement and recycling — and workplace collaboration, of course — we might not even have to get out of bed to accomplish the very important things for which we are paid so handsomely.
For example, there is a new iPhone application called Yes|No that accelerates decision making through an algorithm I have to admit is so far over my head it seems almost magical. One poses ones dilemma in the form of a Should I… query. There’s no need even to write it down. I suspect, though I am far from ready to attempt it myself, that a skilled user could merely think the question — amazing as that may seem. In any event, as long as the question is posed in the correct Should I… form, when one presses the easy to use Yes|No button, one gets an unambiguously binary response in the form of a straightforward Yes or No. Consultants? Advisers? Engineers? Not any more!
We are of course eager to convert this tech (LOL! See what I did there? …convert?) by hacking Yes|No into a proprietary prayer app. The essential rules would be the same, but it would a completely new thing because end users would say the word “God” on the front of their query: God, should I… or perhaps something like, Lord, we just really want to praise You and ask if You would be angry if we… You can see the potential, right? And it all happens at 3G wireless speeds which is so much faster than analog prayers.
So you can imagine how excited we were to learn that Noreen Herzfeld — who holds the unlikely job title, professor of Theology and Computer Science at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota — found a web service that promises to email 62 loved-ones six days after you are raptured to be with Jesus and they are left behind:
These messages might be used to pass on information, such as bank account numbers and passwords, but the site stresses the opportunity to leave a letter begging those who remain to accept Christ, a last chance with one’s loved ones to “snatch them from the flames.”
But hold on. Herzfeld, writing for Sightings at the University of Chicago Divinity School’s Martin Marty Center, seems disinclined to remit $40/year to youvebeenleftbehind.com. Her inner computer scientist warns against storing sensitive financial information on such a website and makes her wonder whether anyone should count on the web in a post-rapture world (You’ve seen the movies; why would airliners be the only things that crash?).
What’s more, Professor Herzfeld’s inner theologian inclines her to favor flesh and blood dialogue over messages from the ether. She writes, “Cyberspace is, in the end, an ambiguous place:
As philosopher Albert Borgmann points out, “ambiguity is resolved through engagement with an existing reality, with the wilderness we are disagreed about, the urban life we are unsure of, or the people we do not understand.” Computer applications may seem like a simpler alternative, but they are rarely as satisfying as the real thing.
Perhaps you heard the whooshing sound when the professor let the air out of our balloon. But, not to worry. During our postmortem we had to acknowledge the difficulty of migrating such a service to hand-held devices (even enterprise-approved, Outlook-enabled instruments). And it was there that we recognized the bigger problem. Good as it sounds at first, the business is clearly a nonstarter because the only ones who can count on being raptured are us and our kind and — frankly — there just aren’t that many of us.
