Last week, we asked for mashups of movie titles and food, and the response was so tremendous that we had to catch our breath.
This is how we’re catching it: this week, partly to wind down from last week, partly to celebrate the launch of The New Yorker’s iPhone edition, we’re asking a more reflective question: You know iPhone apps? (That’s not the question—that’s a rhetorical question that helps build the foundation for the actual question.) You know how people use them to accomplish for all kinds of minor tasks? (Again, rhetorical.) Well, imagine that apps had existed not just over the past half-decade, but throughout history. Now invent history’s greatest app. Maybe it’s Shakespeare’s SonnetCreator, which he used to create a hundred and fifty-three of his greatest poems. (The hundred and fifty-fourth, he made up himself.) Or maybe it’s Columbus’s G.P.S., which he used to sail across he ocean (and which he was staring at distractedly as Isabella explained the terms of the voyage she was sponsoring).
Let your imagination run wild, and then wilder. Who used an app? Why? What was it called? Describe your historical app in a tweet and send it to us. Don’t forget to include the hashtag #tnyquestion. Questioningly runs Fridays until Monday morning, when we’ll retweet the best entries, along with instructions on how to download the winning app.
Illustration by Saul Steinberg.