Gmail’s ‘terminal’ theme is a funny time warp

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Gmail released its new set of graphical ‘themes’ today (access them by going to the Themes tab under Settings -- it might take a day or two to appear on everyone’s account). I don’t know, I think maybe I’m too jaded to have a lot of fun changing background colors. The old thrill (and I mean, at this point, 20 years old) of seeing a close-up photo of pebbles, waves or outer space appear magically on the screen, is mostly gone for me.

But perhaps by the same token, I was tickled to see the ‘terminal’ theme, a nod to old-school computer geeks who remember the tribulations of text-based e-mail -- the lost drafts, the accidentally deleted missives, the premature sends. Pine, anyone?

Don’t get me wrong -- you can do plenty of neat things with text. Check out this cool text-art generator. And then there are crazy text paintings like these. But when it comes to e-mail, I think we’re all comfortable with the direction in which things are headed.

(Plus the ‘terminal’ thing is a pretty flimsy facade -- when you get an e-mail with graphics or images in it, the whole illusion is kind of ruined.)

But congrats to the Googler who came up with this one. It’s sort of like a built-in history lesson for these spoiled young whippersnappers who’ve had life served to them on a GUI platter.

— David Sarno