If ever a person needed proof that maths has its uses outside the classroom and the engineering lab, they might find it here. A cunning addition to Google Mail is designed to prevent tired and emotional emailers from sending messages they may later regret.
The Gmail developer described his rationale for creating this clever (if cynical) tool, thus:
Sometimes I send messages I shouldn’t send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.
The application prompts users of Gmail at certain times of day to complete a short maths quiz to earn the right to send an email. It locks out users whose response times tend towards the jellyfish level after a few drinks.
Mail Goggles even lets users choose the times of day that the maths test is active. I would be tempted to run ‘Mail Googles’ all day, every day - not because I’m in a permanent state of intoxication, but rather because any cognitive loss that results from sending LOLcats pictures to chums must surely be mitigated by regular maths tests. A kind of mental yin and yang.
It goes without saying that our Maths-Whizz users are not likely to need Mail Goggles for many years yet. Even so, this throws up the worrying scenario of Whizzers in later years so numerate from their time with Maths-Whizz that the higher difficulty levels offered in Mail Goggles prove no barrier, even after a few stiffeners. Ill-advised late-night emailing – is this the price of knowledge?
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