On the other hand . . .

This is a follow-up to my curmudgeonly post about reunions. Although I don't want to meet or see anyone from my past, I'd like to know what happened to a few people, where their lives went. Humans love stories; we can't help it. It's probably some inherited monkey thing. We literally hunger for them, which is a lucky fact for fiction writers.

So here's my add-on to that post. What I was thinking is that these days, much of our lives are online. Some entrepreneur should write a computer program that gathers the information out there about someone, and then turns it into a narrative, as if it was a news story about the person being sought. All you'd have to do is feed the program names.

If only life had software controls

From the moment I encountered a GUI, a graphical user interface, I was sold. This is how I wanted stuff to work: just drop a file on a program icon and it jumps to life (well, these days, anyway). Perfection.

But now I want more. I want life itself to work with software controls. I want to drop an image of my laundry on a washer icon, and boom, the laundry's done. I want to drop a quiche on a oven icon and smell it cooking within fifteen minutes. And I want to drop my housecleaning (I see it as a tiny, messy blur) on a maid icon. Voila! The house is clean.

But most of all I want to drop an image of myself on a baseball icon and find myself at Fenway Park, watching the game.

Gimme a software interface for life. Gimme!