Forget This Good Thing - a reintroduction

Come one, come all. Let's go on an adventure.

There are answers that can only come from outside. There are times we all need to be interrupted.

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. 

Heard enough? Jump in now. Or download the app.

An oracle is an ancient thing, a voice from the unknown that people turn to when everything they know has stopped delivering the goods. 

Forget This Good Thing is the opposite of a search engine, because it can tell you what you don't necessarily want to hear. It interferes with the imprisoning tendencies of the mind. We know you need it because we need it too.

The latest version is the first update since we launched Forget This Good Thing three years ago.  

What’s new

-Available everywhere - access it immediately on any phone, tablet, Mac or PC

-1,500+ new quips, koans, jokes, insights and zingers

-Focused fortune telling - the Oracle function will help you inquire after your unanswerable questions or impossible dilemmas

-Sit back and let it run - the Watch function shows a succession of aphorisms to strike you at unexpected moments

-Feel your way through - the classic Wander function is still there, allowing you to read as much as you want, and take as much time as you’d like with each aphorism

-Pay us - you may have rightly come distrust anyone who says they don’t want money. Now you can tip us, and rest easy

-Save and share - like what you see? Save it with a single click or tap, and send to a friend

-Two new books - Good Thing I Said Just Forget This and I Forget Just This Good Thing are cool, handy paperbacks with more than 700 new aphorisms in each

-Even instagram - see what’s new and share your own experiences, at @forgetthisgood

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 works 

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. 

Selected Bibliography

Forget This Good Thing – Try it now

Forget This Good Thing – The app for iPhone and iPad

Forget This Good Thing - Paper book 1 - Paper book 2 - Paper book 3

Forget This Good Thing - All About It

Forget This Good Thing - Its creation - What it can do for you - Why it matters - Thirteen descriptions - The Risks - Case Study - Case Study #2 - The secret history