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6.22.2004 posted by William 19:54 link |
Because of a suggestion made this weekend by Wil Wheaton, not one but two sites have sprung up for the purpose of soliticing GMail invites for servicepeople overseas: GMail for the Troops and the even blunter GMail 4 Troops. I feel like this represents a slice of the zeitgeist, a bringing together so many issues of the 00's into little URLs: technology lust & the internet boom; corporate branding and marketing; jingoism & patriotism; war blogging; spontaneous, ad-hoc community creation. It's all there in this bizarre nexus which had made it very difficult to decide whether to offer an invite or not. I love cool technology, which GMail certainly is, but I've gotten a little disgusted at the GMail fetishism as of late (even though it got me some free stuff), especially since I think Google rolled out their beta test with all of that in mind. I support our individual troops who are doing their best in an awful situation, but I don't want to support an ill-undertaken occupation which daily brings further damage to America's image and credibility. |