Software Innovation

There's a tremendous need in the dating community for a new e-mail feature. I have nothing to offer the brilliant programmer who could make this happen but the knowledge that he or she had made the dating world a better place.

I want an option on all my e-mail accounts and applications that would know when a relationship was over. The code could then reach out and delete all the e-mails sent to that person during the time period of the relationship. Or maybe there could be an internal variable that would constantly be monitoring the average length of relationships in the user's life. When that time passed, the notes would be deleted. (Virtual Hold has a software trigger called the Turn-On Threshold. Maybe the software I'm suggesting could have a Turn-Off Threshold trigger.)

I received an e-mail the other day from a man I dated in late 2004-early 2005. This was Mr. Bushy Eyebrows and Protruding Nosehair from El Paso. Out of the blue he sent me an e-mail asking if I had moved from Tucson. I think maybe he gave me a nostalgic call and found my old number disconnected. The problem? The e-mail was a reply to a loving note I had sent him in early 2005. The loving thoughts toward him that I held at that time are long gone. Very Long Gone!

I was actually astonished that he hadn't deleted those messages. But when I consider how rarely he cleans his house, I guess it's not surprising that he also never cleans his in-box.

I know this software innovation sounds like a violation of one's privacy rights, but c'mon! Isn't there some interest in letting bygones be bygone that's stronger than the right to keep old-and-never-to-be-resurrected love notes?

Other alternatives? Don't commit to pixels any words that you don't want to see again five years from now. I guess that's my new philosophy.