Ethical Software by Alex Bunardzic

As some of you might already know, I’ve been working on a true web product with some of my friends. It’s been going slower than I’ve initially hoped for, and for the longest time we’ve had this feeling that we’re all alone in a vast desert.

That all changed last Friday, October 19, when I’ve received a “Welcome to smarter email” message from Sandy. Now, after giving it only a couple of days of probationary grace period, Sandy became my faithful new secretary, and the web finally feels like a civilized place it once promised to be.

What’s the Big Deal?

It’s just a freakin’ email, innit? Well, not so fast! Sandy is a brilliant piece of technology.

Remember when everyone was talking about the next killer app on the web? What will it be? Is it going to be a photo sharing site, a video sharing site, a social bookmarking site, or… Well, none of these. These are all merely frivolous, learn-the-ropes types of web sites. Soon the dust will settle, and all these sites, that are all the rave right now, will be forgotten.

But what will remain is sites like I Want Sandy. And there is a simple reason for that: sites like that one are hell bent on serving the real human needs.

Needs? What needs?

Needs such as having a reliable assistant who will pay very close attention to what you’re doing. Needs such as being able to ask many confidential questions that may save your bacon, and get a lightning fast answer back.

These are the real human needs. We humans can easily survive and get along without necessarily having to see the latest photos of our friend’s puppy. However, being able to easily and seamlessly tell our assistant to remember many details that transpire during our busy workaday lives, and then, in a pinch, being able to ask our assistant to refresh our memory and to remind us, is something that is of utmost importance to us.

Not only that, but being able to do all these things and not worry about the location or the whereabouts of any physical object, is an absolute necessity. True, we can acquire a PIM device, our little electronic personal assistant (such as an iPhone), but what happens when we forget to bring it with us? Or, when it runs out of batteries? Or, when we (gasp!) lose it?

Always there

The true promise of the web is that it is always there. And, significantly, it does not depend on any proprietary device. In other words, even if we don’t have a cell phone, or a computer, we can still walk into any library or a corner coffee shop, and get all our vitally important information delivered to us.

The beauty of the web is that it is a platform that allows us to organize our lives in such a fashion. That in turn relieves the stress of having to be married to a particular object, such as a personal computer, or a personal information manager. Anything personal implies a limited, one of a kind physical object, that needs to travel with us. This arrangement is very stressful, because physical objects tend to get lost, stolen, forgotten, and easily damaged.

The web, on the other hand, cannot possibly get stolen, forgotten, lost or damaged. As such, it is the most robust, the most reliable assistant humans could ever conceive of.

Yes, but who’s going to do the legwork?

So, the web is nothing new, and the email is nothing new, so again, what’s the big fuss about Sandy?

Well, it all comes down to the nitty-gritty — who’s going to do all this legwork? I’m a busy man, and expecting me to remember and stop what I’m doing and store all that vital information somewhere on the wiki or some other repository is totally unrealistic. Plus, when the time comes to retrieve some critical piece of info, expecting me to remember where I put it is another exercise in futility.

And so the promise of the computers and the promise of the web has been left largely unfulfilled. That is, until Sandy arrived!

You see, Sandy is a perfect human servant. Not only is she tireless and infinitely attentive, she also has unlimited and flawless memory. But on top of that, and most significantly, she is non-intrusive. And that’s the real clincher, the real value proposition that Sandy brings to the table.

From now on, all I have to do to enable Sandy to serve me is cc her on all my important emails. I may toss in a casual “Sandy, remind me to buy flowers for my wife’s birthday on Tuesday”, and Sandy will be on the job like white on rice.

The real trick is to get an assistant who will not expect me to do any legwork. Just a casual nod to the assistant should suffice. And Sandy seems to be the perfect fit. She seems to understand enough of a shorthand to be sufficiently useful, without expecting me to go out of my way to explain things to her.

Enough gushing!

OK, I’ll stop right here, and suggest you give Sandy a whirl. You should also know that I’m in no way associated with this product, nor with the team that produced this brilliant piece of work. So, in a way, I’m impartial and only look at this web site from a personal, pragmatic point of view.

Even though a proper disclaimer that ‘your mileage may vary’ seems appropriate here, I’d say that your mileage will not vary, and that you’ll get the exact same exquisite pleasure from using Sandy as I’m having right now.