Gmail as Art

Gregory Trefry recently wrote an intriguing vignette in PopMatters ("Gmail: Art and Design?") that explores Google's Gmail as an aesthetic feat. Greg reviews the way Gmail has helped him better understand not just email storage but his brain's organization of "real life" information. Here's his revelation on Gmail's message threading:

"With Gmail, when you reply, the program does not even offer a field to change the subject line...This...seems to be exhorting us to order our thoughts more tidily. Gmail is saying to you, "This is a conversation, not a message. It's ongoing and related, not singular and disconnected. You will think of this message as part of that conversation." This line of thought eventually becomes baked into our mental organization. Now when I look at an inbox in another e-mail program, all of those repeated subject lines seem messy and scattered."

[This article also appears on Greg Trefry's blog I am the economy.]