LIFE
Real life
Melissa Kite
After months of trying not to try the exciting
new version of Gmail, the exciting new ver-
sion of Gmail tried me.
I hadn’t realised it had happened until I
opened my laptop and didn’t recognise my
own inbox. With the horror that creeps up in
me like acid reflux to greet all technological
advances, I realised that forces unknown had
shut down my laptop in the night and upgrad-
ed me to the new Gmail while I was asleep.
‘Dear God, no!’ I screamed, as I tapped
away furiously trying to change my email
back to the format I could understand. But
the option in settings for ‘Go back to classic
Gmail’ had disappeared.
‘No! Please no! Please! Christ, no!’ I
wailed like Edward Woodward in The Wick-
er Man as the pagans are lighting the fire
beneath him and the sacrificial chickens.
Turns out you can only resist new versions
for so long by clicking the opt-out button.
They won’t let you resist for ever. I don’t
know who They is exactly, but it’s not the
whizz kids in Silicon Valley getting their mil-
lennial kicks out of tormenting the over-45s
with new versions of things succeeding new
versions of things succeeding new versions
of things. Faster than the speed of meno-
pause these new versions of things succeed
themselves. Faster than the speed of deterio-
rating eyesight, faster even than the expan-
sion of bunions.
So who is They? ‘They’ is the people the
whizz kids work for. I have thought long and
hard about this and the only motive I can
think of for all this new stuff is to make our
attention spans so short that we are sitting
ducks for whatever is coming, ultimately.
The fact that your own computer can be
shut down in the night, remotely, and that
something you didn’t want can be down-
loaded on to it by a faceless entity is proof
enough of something really scary.
If you don’t believe me, consider this: the
worst thing about the new Gmail is a series
of boxes that pop up unbidden and which
appear to be in no way controllable by you
or me, the ironically entitled user.
The main box is very big and when it first
pops up it asks you if you want the other
boxes to pop up. These boxes are not called
boxes by Them, they are called ‘alerts’. This
word alerts is used throughout the internet
and is designed to show that all this is essen-
tial. One is alerted to things one needs to be
alerted to.
However, if you have Facebook alerts
switched on — and you will unless you have
mined deep into your settings to find the
underground online caves where Facebook
hides the option to turn its alerts off — then
you will be getting alerts popping up on your
screen telling you that a person you do not
know who you accepted as a Friend because
you didn’t want to be rude has just posted
a comment about her wedding anniversary.
This is of no consequence to you at all,
but you are being told about it because you
have alerts.
On Gmail, I presume these alerts are
designed to alert you to the fact that some-
one has sent you an email or replied to one
you’ve sent them, quite as though it had not
occurred to you to check your own inbox
every now and then, so there is a legitimate
need for your inbox to flash in front of you
and interrupt what you are doing so you
can react immediately to the earth-shat-
tering occurrence of an email being sent to
you, just in case death or destitution, pre-
sumably, results if you do not respond with
lightning speed.
That is the ostensible purpose of these
alerts. But if we assume that to date there is
no known incidence anywhere in the world
in which disaster has resulted from a person
not being instantly made aware of a post-
ing on Facebook about a stranger’s wed-
ding anniversary, or not receiving an email
from Barclaycard about their money trans-
fer rates for that month, let us consider what
the actual purpose is.
The purpose of these alerts is to shatter
your attention span, to decimate your ability
to think coherently, to be absorbed in a task,
to have concentration, to be present.
The new Gmail has been flashing the
box about whether I want the boxes every
15 seconds for three days now. In order to
resist, I have to click ‘no’ every time.
The only way to stop the box about
whether I want the boxes is to say yes to the
boxes.
I may have to accept the boxes, just to get
rid of the box about the boxes. Once they
have made me have the boxes, who knows
what they can achieve?Bridge^
Susanna Gross
I’ve just come back from ten days in Orlando,
but don’t ask me what it’s like — I haven’t a
clue: I never made it out of the World Cent-
er Marriott, where the Bridge World Series
was taking place. Such is the bridge life: you
travel the world, and see none of it.
I played in the Mixed Teams through a
fog of jet lag (that’s my excuse, anyway); we
eventually got knocked in the Round of 64.
In the Mixed Pairs, my partner Tom Paske
and I failed to qualify for the A-final, but
there was still a lifeline: the top three pairs
(out of 112) in the B-final got a pass back to
the A. We finished 4th — 0.07% behind 3rd.
Ah well, I shouldn’t complain — we had bad
luck, but good luck too. Here, for instance:Sitting South, I bid too much. My 2w was
game-forcing. When Tom cue-bid diamonds,
I propelled us to slam. East doubled, and
Tom, realising a diamond ruff was coming,
cleverly removed to 6NT.
West led XA and a second diamond,
East discarding a heart. I cashed my four top
spades and three hearts, ending in dummy.
East, feeling the squeeze, discarded two
clubs. I now knew West’s shape: 0-5-7-1. In
the four-card ending, I held wAQ52 oppo-
site z 6 wJ83. East held z 10 w1097. There
was no point finessing the wQ — even if
East held the wK, I’d still lose a club and a
spade. So I crossed my fingers and played a
club to the wA — bingo! When West’s sin-
gleton wK fell, the rest were mine.West North East South
1 z pass 2w
2 X pass pass 2 z
3 X pass pass 4w
Pass 4X pass 4NT
pass 5y pass 6z
pass pass dble pass
pass 6NT pass pass
dble pass pass passN
W E
Sz A Q 2
y K 6 4
X J 4 3
w A Q 5 2z 10 9 8 7 5
y 9 5
X 7
w 10 9 7 6 4z K J 6 4 3
y A Q 2
X K 5
w J 8 3z –
y J 10 8 7 3
X A Q 10 9 8 6
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