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Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You.

数字生活
信息过载
There is no end of ‎ for why the internet feels so ‎ these days. The New Yorker ‎ the ‎ to ‎ ‎. Wired ‎ a ‎ in which ‎ cease ‎ their users and begin monetizing them. The M.I.T. Technology Review ‎ ad-based business models. The Verge ‎ ‎ engines. I agree with all these arguments. But here’s another: Our digital lives have ‎ one ‎ after another.
A shame closet is that ‎ in your home where you ‎ the stuff that has nowhere else to go. It doesn’t have to be a closet. It can be a ‎ or a room or a chest of drawers or all of them at once. Whatever the space, it is defined by the absence of ‎ about what goes into it. There are things you need in there. There are things you will never need in there. But as the shame closet grows, the ‎ of ‎ or ‎ ‎ too ‎ to ‎.
The shame closet era of the internet had a beginning. It was 20 years ago that Google ‎ Gmail. If you were not an internet user back then, it is hard to ‎ the ‎ that ‎ Google’s ‎. Inboxes routinely topped out at 15 megabytes. Google was offering a free gigabyte, dozens and dozens of times more. Everyone wanted in. But you had to be invited. I remember ‎ for one of those early invites. I remember the ‎ of finding one. I felt lucky. I felt chosen.
A few months ago, I ‎ that Gmail ‎. I have more than a ‎ unread messages in my inbox. Most of what’s there is junk. But not all of it. I was ‎ too much that I needed to see. Search could not save me. I didn’t know what I was ‎ for. Google’s algorithms had begun ‎ me. What they ‎ was a priority and what I ‎ was a priority ‎. I set up an ‎-responder telling anyone and everyone who emailed me that the address was ‎.
Behind Gmail was an ‎ technological ‎. The ‎ of storage was ‎. In 1985, a gigabyte of hard ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ $75,000. By 1995, it was ‎ $750. Come 2004 — the year Gmail began — it was a few dollars. Today, it’s less than a ‎. Now Gmail offers 15 gigabytes free. What a ‎. What a mess.
Gmail’s ‎ — ‎ storage ‎ by ‎ ‎ ‎ — ‎ the ‎ of ‎ everything online. According to iCloud, I have more than 23,000 photos and almost 2,000 videos resting ‎ on Apple’s servers. I have tens of thousands of songs liked ‎ in Spotify. How much is ‎ in my Notes app? How many ‎ do I have ‎ in Messages, in WhatsApp, in Signal, in Twitter and Instagram and Facebook DMs? There is so much I loved in those ‎. There is so much I would ‎ in rediscovering. But I can’t find what matters in the morass. I’ve given up on trying.
What began with our files soon came for our friends and family. The ‎ ‎ made it easy for anyone we’ve ‎ met, and ‎ of people we never met, to friend and ‎ us. We could ‎ with them all at once without communing with them individually at all. Or so we were told. The idea that we could have so much ‎ with so little ‎ was an ‎. We are digitally ‎ to more people than ‎ and ‎ ‎ ‎. Closeness ‎ time, and time has not ‎ in ‎ or ‎ in ‎.
The digital ‎ ‎ off my passivity. I now pay Apple and Google a monthly fee for more storage. It would take too ‎ to delete everything necessary to ‎ ‎ their ‎. Various algorithms ‎ to do for me what I no ‎ do for myself. They ‎ me with pictures from my past and offer to sell me books of my own ‎. They ‎ me up songs that are like the ones I’ve loved before but ‎ ‎ ago. My ‎ is ‎ with recommended ‎ from influencers and advertisers who mean nothing to me.
A few months ago, I ‎ to take back ‎ of my digital life. I began with my email. I ‎ to Hey, an email service that takes a very different view of how email should ‎. Gmail and virtually all of its competitors assume anyone should be able to email you and then you should ‎ and ‎ and ‎ and ‎ those messages. Hey ‎ that only the people you want email from should be able to email you.
The first time anyone sends you a message, it goes into what’s called the Screener, and you have to whitelist or blackball the sender. If you blackball the sender, that’s it. You never see email from that address again. It also has another ‎ I love: a clean ‎ for ‎ to emails, so you can think and ‎ without the visual ‎ ‎ to so many other services.
Hey forces me to make ‎ rather than ‎ me to ‎ them. I ‎ have to ask whether I want email from this or that sender, and if so, where it should go. Which is not to say Hey is ‎ or ‎ that it fully ‎ the problems I’m ‎. Its ‎ is far ‎ to Google’s. It’s too hard to rediscover mail that I’ve viewed but took no action on. There’s no way of ‎ different kinds of mail that come from the same address. It has ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ with many, many ‎. I ‎ the easy integration with all the other Google ‎ I need to ‎.
But for me, for now, the ‎ is what I’m ‎ for. I am ‎ — genuinely — for what Google and Apple and others did to make digital life easy over the past two decades. But too much ‎ carries a ‎. I was ‎ into the belief that I didn’t have to make ‎. Now my digital life is a ‎ of ‎ to the ‎ of ‎ maximal storage with minimal intention.
I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have ‎ of ‎ every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my ‎ to ‎ of people on X and Facebook ‎ as I ‎ correspondence with dear friends. I have ‎ everything and saved nothing.
I do not ‎ anyone but myself for this. This is not something the ‎ did to me. This is something I did to myself. But I am ‎ now for ‎ that insists I make ‎ rather than ‎ that none are needed. I don’t want my digital life to be one shame closet after another. A new ‎ has ‎ for me: I want it to be a garden I tend, snipping back the weeds and ‎ the ‎.
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Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You. | Leximory