Think of the Net as a global ocean. With an estimated 25 million people diving in weekly from the United States alone to browse the Web, are the only forces eroding the degrees of separation between strangers online a Sargasso of spam and a slough of cybersex? If the Web is such a worldwide medium, why are our address-book files so svelte, so determined by our national identities and obsessions?
A quirky, ambitious Japanese project called Bottle Mail is aiming to turn one of the most obvious characteristics of the online world - the presence of millions of communicative people who don't know one another - into a resource. Taking the Net-as-ocean metaphor a step further, Bottle Mail allows people to create text-and-image messages and drop them into the digital sea, where they wash up on the desktops of people they don't know, in places all over the world.
It's a poetic idea more than it is a strictly "useful" one, but Yoshihito Nagai, the creator of the software, is not ashamed of having invented something that may only serve to make the Net a little friendlier. The FAQ on the Bottle Mail site proudly states that Bottle Mail "isn't any good for anything." In a world of data-smogged I/O junkies anxiously punching from one hyperlink to the next, Bottle Mail, says Nagai in his distinctively evocative English, is for "idles" like himself, who "love spending a time to do nothing in front of the sea."
"I think people don't know their wants so often. We meet nice books in a bookstore when we are wandering there," Nagai explains. "I want to make something like that."
Bottle Mail users download proprietary software - currently available for Windows machines only - via email for a small fee (US$2.60), and then create messages, using colorful templates and icons if they wish, which are converted to .bmp files. These files are then sent to the Bottle Mail server, which randomly and anonymously mails them to Bottle Mail subscribers as "bottles" that wash up on a display of a pastel beachfront on the recipient's screen, with the soothing sound of waves ploshing in the background.
Though relying on simple images ensures that Bottle Mail readers in the Ukraine or Norway will be able to comprehend your message, the software also allows users to input text, such as return addresses, increasing the chances that the arrival of a bottle will spark the beginning of a new friendship that might never have happened otherwise.
Like Tamagotchi, Bottle Mail requires some upkeep. If you neglect to uncork your incoming bottles regularly, your "beach" will look like the Jersey shore. "That is your punishment for not paying attention to your Bottle Mail," the FAQ sternly advises. "If you are sincere about using it, your beach will clean itself up. We need to take care not to pollute the oceans in our real lives too!"
Since the program's release in June, Nagai says, 60,000 people have downloaded the program in Japan alone, and more than 5,000 messages traverse the Bottle Mail sea daily. Nagai hopes that his program will encourage "completely free communication" on the Net. "If you want to say something that is totally inappropriate," he urges users, "let it fly."
At the least, says Nagai, "you can marvel at how many weirdoes are running around out there."
