Forget This Good Thing is an attempt - by turns playful and deadly serious - to harness a fundamental force of the universe to turn the world's 6.6 billion smartphones into real-time oracles.
This original work by Matthew Dublin (software design and execution) and Colin Dodds (words) uses random-number-generating technology to harness the idiosyncrasies of synchronicity and create a wholly unique experience for each reader, each time you open it. Forget This Good Thing is also a book, and was named a finalist for the 2022 Big Other Book Award for nonfiction!
Get the free app for iPhone and iPadGet the book, the second book and the thirdRead why it works and how it came about and why it may matter and what it’s like to use
An oracle is a very ancient thing. It’s a voice from the unknown to the unknown. People turn to it when everything they know has stopped delivering the goods.
Forget This Good Thing is the nemesis of Google, because it can tell you what you don't necessarily want to hear. It interrupts. It interferes with the imprisoning tendencies of all minds global and personal. We know you need it because we need it too.
That said, no promises. Stay awake.
Why it might work
It’s a fact that we will die without a complete picture of what we’re involved in by being alive. The reasons for this blindness are up for discussion. Are we only hearing what we want to hear? What we can bear to hear? Is it just another mystery?
Regardless, there are glimpses. When we least expect them, there are moments.
The rest of the time, something holds us back. Maybe it’s our upbringing, or the crooked timber of the human condition, or just the divided structure of our brains. But we still ask how can we begin to pierce this womb of blindness. Not through data as it's currently championed, which feeds back to us largely what we've already known or liked or said.
The best shot at the truly and uniquely unknown is through the unanticipated, the unrequested, the so-called random non-sequitur (or so we believe).
People used to know where to find this - in arbitrary pages of books, the utterances of women wild-eyed on volcanic fumes and collections of stone-age poetry accessed through the tossing of sticks or the flipping of coins.
In a moment when the nets of personal preference, personal habit and personal opinion seem to tighten nefariously, we offer Forget This Good Thing as a pocket knife to use for relief and even possibly escape.
Try it. Who knows?
How it does that
Your phone is listening. It’s okay. We’re all used to it, one way or another. But it’s especially keen about its own temperature - too hot or too cold and it won’t work.
That temperature depends on how often you use it, the apps you use, if it’s in your pocket or a bag, if you leave it on a surface or keep it close - a thousand factors personal, technological, social and weather-related. Those variables are one reason why Forget This Good Thing will never deliver the same experience twice. Or your money back (it’s free).
The next reason is the ring-oscillator-based random number generator, which uses the phone’s heat reading as one variable. It’s the only data that the phone accesses. And it doesn’t report that data back to us.
Another reason you’re likely to encounter something original every time you open Forget This Good Thing is the library of more than 1,500 original answers (sayings, jokes, quips, aphorisms, maxims, arrows, koans, bon mots, observations and zingers) this technological wonder draws upon to meet you in the sweaty or frigid moment where you find yourself.
This is how technology engages the force of synchronicity - or surprisingly meaningful random chance - to speak to you in a way that might matter.
In the end, Forget This Good Thing is a piece of art. It’s a prayer. And like any new art or any new prayer, there’s only one measure its value: Does it work?
Maybe. Let’s find out, together.
